


To Move the Universe

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alderaan, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Leia Organa, F/M, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Friends to Lovers, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Leia Organa-centric, POV Leia Organa, Poor Bail, Senator Leia Organa, Swearing, What if Leia was tempted by dark side AU, close quarters leads to romance, multi-chapter fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 10:44:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16240022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: In the time leading up to A New Hope, Leia takes a different tactic, leading to very different results.After all, a bounty hunter is loyal to credits, not to cause, a Princess  has a fair amount of credits in her dowry and a senator has a fair number of enemies that could be brought to justice by a bounty. But actions lead to reactions, and the power growing within her might just result in a very different story for all parties involved.Chapters 1-5 can be read as a standalone arc, if you prefer resolutions in your fic. I'll update with other arc chapter ranges as they occur.





	1. Chapter 1

Falling in love is rather awkward. All the blushing, the muttering of stupid things, the replaying of said stupid things hours and days after the subject of the crush has long since left your view.

In fact, the only thing more awkward than falling in love is when the person you’ve fallen in love with is actually someone technically working for you.

Well, _technically-technically_ he’s working for the Republic, but he’s being paid by your sizable fortunes as a princess, and he doesn’t exactly know how each bounty or task he’s been paid to do is adding up to hopefully fight against the growing darkness. 

No. He probably does. Boba Fett is no fool.

It’s Leia who is the fool, and she knows it. A teenage fool in love, with too much money, and not enough freedom. 

* * *

 

She had big plans for how she could help, starting with becoming a senator, only a few months ago, at the age of eighteen. But what she found, frustratingly enough, was how little one person could do.

That was when she started to skim off her dowry fund, using hacking techniques she’d picked up over her years of kissing the most unsuitable young men. Her aunts used to say that if there was a scoundrel within a stone’s throw of Leia, she’d find a way to kiss him by the end of the night.

Those same aunts would probably die if they knew what effect Boba Fett’s voice had on Leia.

Not from the first time they’d met, of course. Leia had done her research and found him to be both highly efficient, and a consummate professional. There was no gossip on him on the dark holonet, nor any suggestion he might be involved in the spice or slave trade, despite the name of his ship. 

So, she hires him. For a simple matter of bringing a known slave trader to justice. A man who somehow, all the other officials have let slide through their grasp, again, and again. But this time, faced with Leia smiling sweetly, the convict properly shackled before her, they were forced to arrest him.

It was amazing to her to realize just how easily her money could buy justice.

The next few missions all happen like that; Leia slowly wiping out the worst offenders, and making the government she’s fast realizing is more corrupt than she ever dreamed, implement the justice they espouse.

It’s not until the time that one of those prisoners breaks free, and lunges at her, that something changes. Fett’s arm flys out, and a whipcord whizzes through the air. It wraps the prisoner completely, including all six of its tentacle-like arms. Then, he pulls out a tranq dart, sinks it into the prisoner's shoulder, and looks up at Leia.

That’s the moment her heart flips backward, and the whole universe spins around her. Something about his posture, about that T-shaped visor, reflecting only Leia’s wide eyes, about the way the night air feels against her skin, sends her blood racing.

“You didn’t kill him,” she manages to say.

“You didn’t order me to.”

It’s those words that occupy most of her dreams, after that night. The way he was such a professional, the way he treated orders as absolute. For Leia, who couldn’t even order a maid to stop fussing with her hair and be listened to, the idea of giving orders that are always obeyed is terrifying and inspiring.

It’s awkward enough to fall in love with a man without a face. It’s worse to realize you’re falling in love with power.

* * *

 

She asks him, the next time they meet. “Is there anything you won’t do?” 

They’re standing outside a nondescript loading dock, his ship only a few feet away. It’s as battered and plain as his armor, conveying nothing about him either. But the Mandalorian armor, the  _beskar’gam_ as research tells her it's called, also reminds her of a brave young woman she met once, and she finds that comforting. She wonders if the two have met, but is pretty sure that there would only be one of them standing at the end of that confrontation.  She's also quite sure the woman would not be pleased by Leia's tactics of making a mercenary into a defender of justice, as long as the cash flow remains.

“Nothing that’s within your range of imagination, Princess.”

He always calls her that. Not Leia, and not senator. She’d tried to have a disguise the first time, but he’d knew her instantly. He's one of the first to have so easily seen through her disguises.

It’s frustrating, to realize she is so knowable that one can guess her name within a moment, and yet, she knows nothing of the man in the battered armor before her. 

“Well, I’m sorry to be a boring contractor, then.” She still jokes like a schoolgirl might because it has been so little time since she left her school behind. For all her adventures, for all her plans, she is barely more than a girl.

“Don’t be.” He pauses for a moment, and Leia thinks she might hear the smallest bit of youth in that pause. Not youth like her own, no. Fett’s documented to have been a hunter for at least a decade, and she doubted he was flying ships at eight. But a certain lack of ice that suggests there are still some emotions, deep under that modulated voice. “People who get creative are the ones who stop seeing life as anything more than a game they intend to win.”

“And you? What do you see life as?”

Another pause. She’d give all her gowns, and most of her jewelry, to see under the helmet at that moment. “I’m a simple man, trying to make my way in the universe.”

He leaves after that, her credits in his hand.

Leia remains there, watching his ship take off, the strange pivot it does to fly forward, and feels as if her heart has pivoted in the same way. 

More than that, though, she knows that there is nothing simple about her, nor about what she wants.

Her heart whispers that she wants the whole universe.

Her head snaps at that sentiment. No. She wants to protect the universe. It’s different.

But it’s easier to protect something, her heart whispers when it’s under your control.

* * *

 

It’s an awkward thing to fall in love when the very trappings of the government you and your family are dedicated to are also falling down around you.

Leia’s first meeting with Emperor Palpatine left her badly shaken. She’d curtsied, as she’d been taught to, and she was pretty sure she’d said all the right things. She was also pretty sure he mentioned that she was her father's daughter, and the comment hurt in ways it shouldn't. Being adopted has never mattered to her before.  But there was a tight vice around her heart now, like pressure from water when one dives too deep.

The Emperor's red eyes seem to stare at her from every dark corner she sees. But there's no way to fix it, no bounty she can place on her nightmares so that Fett can hunt them down.

However, she can increase her credits, for future, more tangible bounties, and she does. Leia Organa is a tasteful young woman, elegant and refined.  Padia Ganya is a champion at betting games, a terror at the Sabaac tables, and an altogether successful scoundrel. One night, she nearly wins a ship from a young man with a dashing cape and an even more dashing smile. But the ship, as fast as he says it is, looks like a piece of junk. It's not a ship she's after; she can't escape her duties by jumping into hyperspace. All she can do is buy time, buy justice, buy peace from the red eyes in the shadows.

It was then that the dreams start. Dreams of Coruscant, but a different skyline than the one now. A skyline that matches the way it used to be. The way no one is supposed to talk of, full of the Jedi that no one is supposed to remember.

They weren’t real. That’s what Leia’s been told, over and over. At most, there were a few radicals with flashing swords and sleight of hand that sought to destroy the peace so hard-won by loyal troops in the Clone Wars.

But her dreams show an academy full of them, brown-robed figures working with, talking to, saving, senators and clone troops.

She digs through records, looking for anything more than tax findings and trade war documentation. She even takes to sneaking out and wandering through Coruscant's seedy underbelly, looking for… for what? Ghosts? Flashes of memories that aren’t hers to begin with?

It’s there she learns to shoot, but then, only ever to stun. She’s a very good shot.

And still, she finds nothing.

Nothing, but once, when she got too close to the base of the Imperial Palace, she falls to her knees, her hand to her heart. She hears children screaming, though the street is quiet, and weeps, without knowing why. The five spires point skyward, and the night is as clear as any can be on the metropolitan planet, but in Leia’s vision, the structure burns and the sky is illuminated with search beacons and bombs.

It takes her a while to recover, and after, she stops her wandering, choosing to research in other ways, instead.

Leia presses her father for details, without admitting to the dreams and visions. Bail Organa gives her a few details, here and there, no more than he ever has. It pains him to talk of the past. It hurts her more to cause him pain, though the name General Kenobi echoes in her heart.

After a less than useful search of another set of records, she realizes there’s someone else who might know more. Someone who answers to the simple call of credits, and not the pull of duty or government. 

She contacts him on the private channels while sitting in her apartment. All around her are the trappings of a princess and senator, luxury beyond compare, but the device in her hand is utilitarian, illegal, and strangely appealing for both those reasons. Just like the man who gave it to her.

She asks,  “will you take a bounty for information?”

His voice crackles back, and it almost sounds amused. Her face reddens when she realizes he’s amused at her naivety. “You’re going to buy information and have it released over a comm channel?”

“Um. No?” She bites her lip. “No. Of course not. Send me a rendezvous spot. On Coruscant.”

“I would not expect a Senator to be anywhere else.”

When he says it, she wonders how much he knows of all of her other little missions and side quests, all the intrigue, and questions that have been part of her life for so long. It feels, most days as if her life is spliced between other narratives, heroics that she only witnesses out of the corner of her eyes, and brave deeds that she never quite can take the credit for.

She’s not a simple girl, not at all. But the universe is far from being hers.

* * *

 

This time they meet in an old warehouse. His booted feet click against the cold durasteel floor. She supposes when one is a walking weapon, silence isn’t always necessary.

“How old are you?”

“That’s the information you want.” It’s not a question from him

“Part of it.”

He tilts his head, just barely. “What are you going to do with this information?”

“It’s only mine. Have I said anything about our other dealings?” Their arrangement has gone on for more than a year now. Boba Fett is practically a freedom fighter, for all the good he’s done the brewing rebellion.

A freedom fighter that’s been bought with the money her family set aside for her future husband.

It’s a lot of money. 

It’s better used here, in shadows and secret, than in some flashy party to show her off like a ripe Edisa Fig, known for only growing once every three hundred years. Better to be dressed in rough artificial wool, with billowing sleeves that hide how slender, how fragile she is, than to be trussed up and presented for marriage to some wealthy bore of a man.  A little voice inside her head agrees with her. Tells her that it’s all right to leave behind the trappings of royalty, to switch gowns for guns and tiaras for treason, if it means her people will be safe.

That same voice also whispers to her that there is more money, tied to another name, another royal family. But that makes no sense, and so, she ignores it.

In the present moment, Boba Fett shifts his weight, only slightly, and speaks, “Thirty-one.”

Oh. Well. That was. Both good and bad. “So you lived through the Clone Wars.”

“I did.”

“And you knew of the Jedi.” She tries to say it like a sentence, without a trace of any hesitation. More than succeeding, her voice takes on its own power, billowing out like a cloak in a cold breeze. “You will tell me what you know of them.”  Underneath the wide sleeves of the jacket she wears, her hand makes a strange gesture, almost of its own accord, and passes from right to left.

“It will cost you.” 

“Of course it will.” Her voice losing that resonate tone it had. She’s only a rebel, only a princess. Her power comes from the credits in her hand, and the way she can see relationships, correlations, and causations, spread throughout the galaxy. She never questions her intuition, never wonders why she so rarely makes a poor move or loses a game of Sabaac. 

Her heart knows why, but her head keeps that information walled off, protecting her. And perhaps, protecting the galaxy too.

Boba Fett doesn’t tell her much about the Jedi, but she learns enough to know they were real, and enough to know all that she thought was true, was not.

It’s an awkward thing to fall in love with a man much older than her, but it’s a worse thing to fall out of love with the government you thought you'd kill to protect.

  
  



	2. Chapter 2. Waves

Truth is a tool strong enough to move planets.

Leia sees that now, how the choice of which truth has been given, and which has been hidden from shaped her. All this time she’s fought against being dressed up and paraded around like a doll, all this time she’d thought she found freedom by serving in politics, and all of it was a lie.

She is a doll, dressed in the belief of the goodness of the state, bedecked with the hope that there was a peaceful solution to the hate spread by the emperor. 

Now, she’s not sure there will ever be peace in her lifetime.

The Jedi were real. Fett told her that, in no uncertain words. 

“Were they good?” she’d whispered last night.

He laughed, cold and dry. “Is anyone?”

“Then they were dangerous. Like the Emperor says.”

“Every being capable of thought is capable of being dangerous, Princess.” he inclined his head at her. “What’s more dangerous is thinking there’s a wrong side and a right side.”

“There is always a right side.”

He didn't answer that remark. Instead, he took the credits from her hand. “Be careful,” he said, at the edge of the shadows. “Life is not a game of Sabaac. Make the wrong bet, and there’s no next round.”

* * *

 

Far from scaring her away, his words only make her more determined to do better.  She commits fully to the rebellion at that point, even though the more practical part of her knows she’s been falling toward it, falling like an asteroid that comes too close to a planet, falling like fate.

_We are destined to fall,_ her heart tells her, _but burn like comets as we do._

Fall. Fall for treason, or fall in love? Romance and politics are hopeless intertwined these days, a thought that makes that other voice in her head sigh, as if it’s been carrying the weight of all the worlds for far too long.

Her father has been sighing a great deal these days too. He’s noticed the depleted dowry fund.

She blames it on shopping for an upcoming ball.

A princess must never wear the same dress twice, she tells him. Bail Organa’s eyes narrow, but he says nothing.

* * *

 

That night, she dreams of a palace with domed roofs, as round as moons, and waterfalls crashing against rocks. Inside the palace are countless dresses, each one locked away behind a crystal door. A powerful longing spreads through her. The gowns are more beautiful than anything she’s ever seen. Each one a painting of lace, beadwork, feathers, silk. Viewed as a complete wardrobe for one woman, they suggested a person whose life was full of complex power, regal authority, stealth-like an assassin, and pure pleasure.  Lei traces the outline of one, as dark blue as a night sky, with slits for bell sleeves of a lighter blue peeking through. The heavy fabric must have given the wearer a gravitas that Leia, with her round face and impish smile, worries she will never achieve. The next dress looks as if someone had dyed silk in the colors of a sunset. 

Who wore such beautiful creations? And why had her dreams brought her here?

_A princess never wears the same dress twice_. Her own voice echoes down and down the hallway until it reverberates all the way back to her.

Leia shivers, but she does not wake. Instead, she wanders down the hall, her fingers trailing over the cold crystal frames until she reaches the end of the hall.

Two dresses hang on opposing sides of a grand golden door. One is white, as pure as snow, with a cape of petals cascading around it. It, in fact, looks a great deal like the sort of dress that Leia’s parents would be delighted for her to wear. 

The other might make her parents lock her in her own crystal prison. It was little more than leather lingerie and lace whispers, all in shades of black darker than sin. The dress was the type of dress that could conquer hearts and destroy galaxies.

Leia wanted it, suddenly and desperately. In the dream, she pounds her fist against the glass, needing it to break, needing to hold the beautiful gowns. The walls do not crack.

They burn, leaving all the dresses in piles of ash.

She wakes with a bruised fist and the smell of smoke in her sheets.

* * *

 

Truths can be hidden, but the longer they remain underground, the more they poison the withholder. 

It’s spreading through Leia, all the pain of hiding things from her father, the same father who hid the rebellion’s efforts from her, the same father that she can’t help but wonder if he’s hiding more things.

“Leia, dear. Sit. Here, I’ve fresh-made caf.”

Her father offers her a mug, when she stumbles downstairs after a night spent at a low-life casino, spinning a pair of earrings with Zuolite pearls into enough credits to pay the bounty for a low-life serial killer with a sadistic focus on Bothans.

As she accepts the mug, she wonders if blood stains her hands, if it’s not her finger on the blaster trigger. It’s been…simple… to forget the work that her credits have paid for, the same way it is simple to forget that all she has is a result of who her parents are. 

Now she can’t stop looking at her hand, imagining blood staining her nails, her skin. Is she a monster? To send a killer to track down monsters? She’s given up bringing them to justice, sometimes. Sometimes it’s easier to just let him deal with them.

A rebellion is built on hope, but it also is littered with a good number of corpses.

“Thank you,” she remembers to say when her father pours her some of the beverage and passes her sweetener. 

“I know what you’ve been doing, Leia.” His voice is cold. Frigid enough to remind her that he is more than the good-natured gentleman that she adores.

He’s a war veteran, a leader in the nascent rebellion, and her father. 

_You are the child of more than one veteran,_ her head whispers, and she freezes. The voices are stronger these days as if ebbing and flowing like the icy tides of her home planet.

_ Alderaan is not your only home. Tides move on more than one planet. _

Again the voice, and that chill of power tingling all the way down her spine. What is she becoming? Is she monstrous herself, for hunting monsters?

“I’m going to put a stop to it.” Bail Organa says, “We do not need you to be spending money on this.”

He speaks in not quite a code, in case the apartment has been bugged. He's just a disapproving papa, annoyed at his frivolous daughter. Underneath his words lie the truth. He’s a captain of the insurgency, frustrated with his gone-rogue soldier.

“But!” Her protest would be the same in any language, coded or not.

“He is too dangerous, Leia!”

She swallows, and her throat burns as if the caf is boiling. He knew. She shakes her head. Her long hair slips over one shoulder, providing a curtain to hide her too-bright eyes from him. “He’s a good man, Papa.”

“He’s dangerous.”

“Not to me.” Not as long as no one pays him to be, is what she realizes at that moment. The money she provides him is just a leash. Fett is a dog that would as easily bite her as bark for her. Not like the Empire’s cadets, who would delight only in causing her pain; she’s heard their whispers, how they call her a bleeding heart and a dreamer. No. Fett is more dangerous to her because he can be helpful, useful, even good to her.

And he could kill her, just as easily.

Does she matter enough to the universe, she wonders, that someone would take out a hit on her? 

Would she even cost that much to kill?

What is one life worth? A question that used to be mere rhetoric to her has become one she knows the reality of all too well. It terrifies her, to know that each life is valued at a different price.

And you. You are valued above all. Her heart tells her, speaking with something closer to fury than encouragement. I would pay the price of ten thousand planets’ dead to keep you safe.

Leia coughs. It’s the first time she’s aware that her heart’s voice is more than just hers. That there’s power inside her, greater than offered by the Senate, or even her title. 

“I’ve heard you discuss much the same with others,” she retorts. “My dear friend Cee-ah has made similar choices.”

Cee-ah. C.A.  Cassian Andor. His cover as Aach blown, he’s moved on to another name, another cover. Not for the first time, Leia feels jealousy over the spy’s freedom of movement.

But for the first time, the jealousy makes her hands tremble.

No. Not her hands. The table her hands rest upon shakes slightly.

Leia hides her hands under the table, breathing deeply. Trying hard to conquer the feeling raging inside of her. Leia’s been jealous before, of others with more freedom, more power than her. Never before though, has that emotion produced such strong results.

“Cee-ah is not a princess.” Bail says lightly, clearly imagining the scruffy man in a white dress.

“I never asked to be one.” her tone is sharp, and it lands like a blaster bolt into Bail’s chest. His eyes grow wide. She’s hurt him. This is all her fault. She’s terrible. A monster, to say such things to the man who adopted her, who brought her to her loving family.

She needs to fix this.

The power swells in her. Again, her hand moves, right to left, hidden under the table. “You will not stop me in my endeavors.”

“I…”

For the first time, Leia’s will exerts itself, stronger than a neutron star collapsing, stronger than gravity. 

Stronger than truth.

“I will not stop you.” 

“You will forget we ever spoke of this.” There is wetness in Leia’s eyes, and when the tears break, she tastes the salt of the sea, the bitterness of betrayal against family.

_Betrayal is necessary, to achieve what you must,_ whispers her heart.

_Love should never make you cry,_ her head responds. Your father loves you. Forgive him. He will forgive you.

Leia wonders if that could possibly be true.

She doesn’t wonder, though, if her head is speaking of the man sitting before her, or the man who fathered her, years and light years ago.

* * *

 

Truth is a tool, and Leia is learning to wield it, more carefully than a sniper uses his prismatic aligner to adjust his own weapon of choice.

She can lock a target in her line of sight, and fire right combination of honey lies and cold honesty, to get exactly what she wants.

It lets her start amassing power in the Senate. Her days are spent in meetings and consultations, plotting both ways to appear to help the Empire grow, and all the while subtly undermining its authority.

But even her vibrosaw of manipulation can’t cut through a Mandalorian’s armor, and for the first time, Fett refuses a job.

“No.” 

One flat syllable, slicing through all she’s woven. Threads of hope fall from the refusal, little strings made of dreams and sighs. 

That night they talk under the shelter of an abandoned building roof, about mid-way up the vertical mass of buildings that the capital city of the capital planet has become. She’s only inches away from a long plummet down, but she knows she won’t fall. She has become more sure-footed, with all her nighttime explorations. 

“You’ve gotten me other officers before.”

“Not ones like him.”

She folds her arms. “I’ll pay.”

“I know, Princess.”

“But--”

“This is a working agreement. I’m a free man.”

Is it just her, or does that sentence echo strangely in his helmet? “And I’ve never doubted that.”

“Have you?” There’s a little humor now, the smallest touch, the sort that suggests he only amuses himself. “I could be a droid.”

“You’re not.”

“Confident, aren’t you.”

Her hand shoots out. Her motions too, have gotten faster than they ever were. She tugs his hand to her face and 

“Ow!”

She smiles, from where she’d bitten his finger through his glove. For the first time, she’s quite surprised the bounty hunter.

But he turns the tables on her, in a way that makes her realize she might lose more than just a game of Sabaac to him. His finger stays near her mouth and traces her lips. The gloved fabric is rough against her tender skin.

Heat rushes through her body, and her breath goes short.

He pulls his hand away. “Find another barve, Princess. This one’s not for me.”

“If I paid more.”

A slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head. “No credits will have me looking for Erso. Try someone more foolish, Princess.”

He leaves her alone in the shadows of the city. 

* * *

 

The city has become a deadly playground for her, offering all the freedoms her protected childhood never had. Safe. That was the word she’d heard the most as a girl. Keep her safe. It was almost a mantra with her family, one that sometimes echoed in her dreams.

When she was very young, she would climb trees, and chase after an imaginary friend that she was so sure was just ahead of her, just a little bit out of reach.

But she never caught him.

Now, she feels a whisper of that same feeling. The cool night air, for one moment, feels hot, hot and arid, like the air had been on Sarina when she and her father had visited, on a trip she now recognized as having more than one purpose. There was a rebel outpost there.

But here, on Coruscant, there should be no sand, no heat except for the exhaust from old, out-of-registration speeders. 

Leia closes her eyes, but cannot shake the feeling that someone is standing at her side, and they are both looking out to the horizon together. 

It leaves her unsettled enough that she changed the direction of her nightly stroll, plunging deeper into the shadows of the Senate District. Even here, in one of the wealthiest parts of the metropolitan planet, there were ruins, ghosts of once-grand buildings, built over or ignored in favor of better real estate above.

There’s one tower that always calls to her, among those that had been forgotten. Tonight, Leia decides to climb, to answer the siren song that she’s never quite yielded to before.

It’s the same call she hears, sometimes, when she gazes out at the stars. A pull both sweet and heartbreaking, that brings tears to her eyes and fire to her heart.  It’s nothing like the pull she feels toward Fett. That attraction is a tractor beam, bringing her closer and closer to her own destruction.

As she moves up the ruin, she thinks back to the gloved finger on her lips, the way his voice sounded. Dreams of a thousand things she cannot name chase her, circling her as she scales the wreckage, soaring like the thranta of her homeworld. 

When she reaches what was once a penthouse suite, though, all the dreams burst into flames.

She falls to her knees, gasping, hands scrabbling against broken tiles.

This place… 

Tears break from her eyes, falling onto the shattered floor beneath her. 

Why had she come?

Why had that voice led her to a place of such pain?

_Life is pain,_ whispers her heart.

_Truth can burn,_ calls her head. 

She pushes herself to her feet. Then, walks a little further inside the ruined apartment. It must have once been grand, a home to a wealthy senator, just like her own. Is it her mind playing tricks on her, or is there the lingering scent of perfume in the dusty air? The whisper of intimate voices in the still night?

Leia tugs open a door, revealing a closet.

More than a closet.

A…

A what? A hint that her dream had truth? A whisper that things were not all that they seem?

She’s quite sure she’s awake right now but in front of her hang some of the very same dresses from the dream.

The white celebratory one, the soft blue silk of a nightgown, and there, the black leather one.  They’re not trapped by anything. 

Her bag slung across her back could fit one of them. She could own one of these dresses, and all the whispered secrets it offers. 

She doesn’t even consider pawning one for credits. Fett refusing the job left her feeling a little uneasy, made worse when she remembers how her father had protested.

Maybe it is time to be a princess again. To wear dresses, not weapons, and to smile, not scheme.

Now. To choose a dress… Her fingers cascade over them, reassuring her this is real, not a dream. The fabric feels as any dusty old fabric might.

She touches the soft white gown once more. Almost all her gowns are white. Breha says its the perfect color for her, the color of hope, of innocence.

Breha also doesn’t know her daughter has been funding assassinations and kidnappings with her own dowry.

She should be good.

SHe’s tired of being good.

The black dress, all languid power, and sexuality call to her. Within a moment, it’s inside her bag.

There. Now, she should leave. Get home. Forget all of this, and try to remember how to be a simple princess once more.

But as she’s leaving, she steps on something long forgotten. A small metal trap, that creaks under her foot. Gas hisses out from its sides, a toxin no less deadly for the twenty years it lay in wait.

Leia starts to cough. The air in front of her is already cloudy, and her head swims. Which way had she come? She pushes one hand in front of her, afraid of turning the wrong way, but just as afraid of the steep drop she’d climbed up.

“Princess!” 

A voice calls.

She spins around, searching, searching.  

A body collides with her and she screams. Her vibroknife is in her hand in a second, and she thrusts forward. 

It scrapes horribly against metal.

A stormtrooper? Why would…

_“Haar'chak!_ ”

That was Mandalorian, wasn’t it? Why would anyone be speaking that, here?

The arm tightens around her, and she kicks desperately. Her foot collides with more metal. A droid? Was she being kidnapped by a Mandalorian-cursing droid? “Let me go!”

“I should,” a voice mutters. A voice, that although cold, is familiar. Stilling for a moment, she reaches up and touches a T-shaped visor.

Her lips make the shape of an Oh, but no sound comes out.

Rumble starts to fall, amid all the smokey air. 

She thinks with longing of that other dress, all pale white. But she’s made her choice.

Then, above them, more plaster falls. A huge section of ceiling begins to crumble. 

Fett rolls the two of them out of the way, and in the movement, neither of them notice how the rocks hover for too long, fighting against gravity, before crashing.

Leia’s too busy noticing how she can hear his heartbeat, this close to him. It’s a human heart pattern. For all he can practice his cool demeanor and maintain his battered metal exterior, he can’t hide how his heartbeat has increased in pace from the moment he caught her.

And she’s not so innocent to think it’s only due to the falling ceiling.

“Structural integrity gone,” he mutters. “Hold on.”

“To what?” Every part of him she can touch is a weapon.

The roar of ignition and the smell of flame make Leia decide to make do, and she clings to his shoulders.

He takes a running leap, and then they’re falling through the air, the building crumbling behind him.

No. Not falling. Flying. Not well, not with her extra weight pulling him down, but it’s enough that they’re moving through the night air, sinking with controlled grace toward a different balcony. For one moment, Leia looks up at him, the glittering sky behind him, the lights of the city reflected in his visor. She swallows, desperate to know what lies under it.

But the flight is all too short, and he soon sets her down on a ledge.

She spins, and says,  “you were following me.” 

He shrugs. “Just business.”

Her blood goes cold. “Is there… are you collecting a bounty on me?”

There is a long, long pause. Finally, Fett says, “no. You’re no good to me dead.”

He re-ignites the jetpack and soars off into the night. 

Leia stands there, shivering. She touches her bag, to make sure the dress is there. When she moves, she notices the pinprick on her arm, as if a probe droid had taken her blood. She has no idea how much her blood is worth, how in the wrong hands, it could destroy everything she holds dear.

Odd.

The whole night had been so odd. The apartment, the voices, the rescue.

Maybe it really is time to be a princess again.

* * *

 

Everyone searches for truth, though not everyone wants the answer. From the Emperor's right hand to a simple man making his way in the universe, to a long-forgotten hero, staring out at the two setting suns of a planet he’d never expected to call home, one truth could change many lives.

Some of the truths Leia craved were simple. Others could change the universe. And still, other truths would just make her life a lot easier if she could figure them out.

Leia hasn’t heard much from either head or heart in the past few weeks, as she sank back into the role of a princess. Her father is delighted to have her at his side, her mother happy to send along jewelry that Leia has so far resisted the urge to pawn for credits.

Tonight, she feels utterly like a girl again, and nothing like a rebel capable of hiring a bounty hunter. She’s tried a thousand hair styles, but the one that she ends up choosing is simply, a long braid twisted into a crown.  Task complete, she asks her friend, “Winter, is a man whose thirty-one too old for me?

“Why do I feel like this isn’t a rhetorical question?” the young woman replied, busy unpacking her own clothes. The two were sharing a suite of rooms for an elegant ball on the planet Isada. It was the sort of ball that made Breha Organa very happy her daughter attended, the sort that was designed to pair her off with some respectable suitor, the sort that was also quite useful for friendly wagers with foolish men.

Leia had become quite skilled at determining which items a dashing young officer or lordling wore that might be pawned easily back on Coruscant. 

Winter throws a light pillow at her friend. “What are you thinking?” 

“I just… do you think it would be awkward?”

“Is this man a respectable citizen other than his age?” 

“Well.” She considers it. “No.”

“So, perhaps his age is the least of the problems you’re dealing with right now?”

Damn Winter and her logic.

Leia finishes getting dressed. “What do you think?” she turns slowly for her friend. Every motion has to be slow in this dress. It allows almost no range of motion beyond the careful swaying of hips.

Winter whistles, a shocking commoner thing to do for such a socialite. She winks. “You’re not the only one with secrets, my dear friend.”

Leia blushes and giggles, glad she still knows how to. “So it looks good?”

“It looks amazing! I’ve never seen a dress like that before.”

“Me either. I saw it and just… had to have it.”

‘I’m surprised your mother didn’t murder you.”

“Oh, she doesn’t know I’m wearing it.” Leia laughs again, studying herself in the mirror. She doesn’t resemble Breha, no, but she’s proud for once of how she looks. Coiled power and sensuality. The black leather gloves command respect, and the lace skirt whispers gentleness. It’s the perfect combination.

Black, like the night sky above. Black, like the depths of space, and the depths of her power. 

Perhaps white isn’t her color after all.

* * *

 

Her purse loaded down with rings and medallions won with sleight of hand card tricks she wasn’t sure she’d ever learned but wasn’t sure she ever didn’t know, Leia approaches the dance parlor itself. This time, unlike so many other balls, excitement spread through her, a warm pleasant flush that had nothing to do with the glasses of sweet Hosian Prime wine. 

Sometimes that particular planet’s vintage made her a little melancholy, for reasons as ephemeral as its bubbles, which dissolved on her tongue, so she never partook too much. 

Tonight, melancholy was far from her mind. Instead, she moved like water over ice, the lace skirt of her dress trailing behind her, the cool night air sending shivers over her exposed shoulders and chest. 

The dress had come with a feather cape, but she’d had to leave that behind, instead reveling in the stark beauty of her hands enrobed in black leather, the solid pressure of the Chalcedony Wave Necklace against her collarbone. This night, Leia draws all the attention, every head turning. She’d kept in the shadows these past few years, but tonight, she blooms.

Many ask for her hand, and she dances with each, but her eyes never quite remain on their face. She’s searching, always searching. But not for what eyes might find. Rather, she listens to voices, for that singular soft, calculating voice she’d so expected to hear.

Bodyguarding, he'd told her, cost a lot more than any bounty.

But what was cost, if it meant he would see her in this dress, in this room?

At the sound of a bell, they’re all ushered outside for the main event. On this planet, once a year, the particular cocktail of chemicals in the sky create rain unlike any other. It’s why the wealthy elite party here, why the ball was held tonight.

More than one truth can be held at the same time. On one planet, the rain can kill. On another, it can bring life.

Here, the rain falls like diamonds, because they nearly are.

As they all watch from a covered balcony, the rain begins. Each one glittering like snowflakes, though they are the size of one’s palm. The light from the party is refracted ten thousand ways, throwing rainbows across the crowd. Some ooh and ahh. Others make jokes. Still, others use the moment to kiss their sweetheart.

But no moment can last forever. The first crystal drops crash to the ground in front of them, and splitter into a thousand pieces.

That's why they remained under cover of a balcony roof. The shards themselves will be swept up, melted, soldered into more practical glass.

Everything beautiful must become practical, in this universe. Leia sighs, wishing that wasn’t so.

Everyone else claps.

“It’s only rain, no matter what it looks like,” says the man standing next to her. He has dark eyes, and the small lines at their corners do nothing to distract from his rugged handsomeness. The way he stands suggests a military background. Those who had carried weapons never quite rest as easily as civilians. 

“They’re beautiful.”

“While they last,” he replies. “And nothing good ever does.”

He leaves her side, and she turns back to watching the rain shower.

For one moment, she thinks of the dresses in the apartment, the memory of the palace with the waterfalls, the perfect sphere of Alderaan, all of them, beautiful. All of them… gone? No. Why would she think that? Her planet is safe. Peaceful. 

Beautiful.

And yet something about the shattering gems makes her imagine her beloved city shattering too. A single tear falls from her eye, as glittering as any rain drop.

Leia doesn’t realize it. No one does. But for one moment, every flower in the air remains still. None crash in that perfect, lingering moment. It’s a long enough moment to breathe in the beauty, a long enough moment for everyone to see the utter bliss on Leia's face, as the rolling wave of power rests over her shoulders like a cloak.

No one can describe what they saw in that moment, and most will simply say they have never seen a woman look more beautiful.

Or more terrible.

Than Leia had, when she held out her hands and stopped the destruction of beauty by the cold uncaring reality of gravity.

When she defied the rules of the universe, for just one moment.

* * *

 

Truth hurts, especially when it’s one that your heart already knows.

She was foolish, to think he’d be there. Foolish, to think a dress could win over the heart of a man who only loved credits.

Foolish, to care enough to call him.

Leia is still wearing the dress when she intercoms him, from a safe little garden, near hers and winter’s room. The rain dust glitters on the tile floor beneath her feet. “I thought you’d be there.” She hates that her voice is that of a young woman in love, and not someone concerned with matters of state. 

“Have I ever failed on a job before?”

His voice sounds close. Too close.

She spins around. No one has snuck up on her in a year. No one, except for a man trained for stealth against those with the same perceptive abilities Leia uses.

Not that she knows her perception has grown. It’s simply something she leans more each to each day, a truth she relies on more every moment. 

He holds out his hand. For a moment, she thinks, impossibly, he wants her to take it. To hold his hand, to look up into that visor and see an expression other than coldness. 

But no, that is not the truth he offers.

Instead, his fingers unfurl and inside rests a single glass flower, as fragile as hope.

Leia swallows hard. Tells herself it means nothing. Tells herself the flower is just glass. That he is just a bounty hunter and she is just a foolish girl.

But she can’t help reaching out for it and noticing how his hand does not pull away as her fingers brush the gloved palm. Where had he been in the crowd? Had she danced with him? Which face from the dance lay under that helmet?

Does she risk hoping that he saw her in that dress, and wanted her?

“Boba…” she breathes. Just his first name. Daring to whisper that unfamiliar name, which never quite fits the man before her. It’s a soft name, no hard syllables, no sharp consents, not like his last name, which is almost the written form of a snarl.

One name belongs to the man, and the other to the armor.

“You have what you need, then,” he says briskly,

No. Not at all. She is made of aching need, hungering for more than just him. For the way, the universe felt in that moment, when all eyes were on her and she was master of them all. For the way, her body felt as those flowers floated, seconds from destruction. All of her primed with the potentiality of that moment, drunk on the power of controlling the universe.

But he’s the one thing she has yet to figure out how to control, and that makes her want him all the more.

He turns back to her, for just one moment. “You are playing a very dangerous game, princess.”

“No,” she replies. “It’s not a game.”

Because she knows that in the war between her head and her heart, there will never be a winner. 

Only loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of fun little easter eggs in this chapter for fans of the expanded universe.  
> Also, yes! This will be a multi-part fic, in part because I am weak and thrive on comments and kudos. But I promise that it will be five chapters total, and the whole story will be published before December. 
> 
> This is a tricky chapter, because it was me expanding on what I thought would be a one-shot!


	3. Chapter 3. A Father's Concern

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boba Fett has no idea how he got himself into this mess, none at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really, really struggled with this chapter, folks, and I'm not sure I'll ever try writing from Boba's pov again. I promise the last two chapters will be back in the head of our favorite space princess.   
> And as always, comments more than appreciated. They keep me going!

 

A man might be many things in this line of work, Jango Fett had once told his son. Bold, hungry, cutthroat. He'd given his son plenty of adjectives like that, for the years he'd lived, and Boba had heard plenty more attributed to the legend that had fathered (if he could call it that) and raised (for the years they'd had together) him. But a successful bounty hunter must never lose his temper.  
Boba Fett is thirty years old, and for the first time in ages, has managed to do exactly that.  
All it took was one comm message, gone unanswered, for far too long.  
All it took was the twist of emotions in his gut at her silence. Emotions that he knew better than to have. Emotions that might get him killed.

* * *

  
Boba paces back across the Slave I and scans the messages on the private channel as if his perfect memory has somehow faltered. But no. there’s no answer. None since hours ago, when she’d flagged him for that little discussion that had nearly cost him his life. Does she have any idea how dangerous she is to him? How risky it is for him to talk to her when hearing her voice makes him want a thousand things he can’t have, a million things that would destroy him? She’s his own personal neutron star, with enough pull on gravity to bring him close, and to crush him to pieces.  
He pulls up the tracking bug he’d left in her room next. Only the princess could be both brave enough to hire a bounty hunter and naive enough to not assume he’d bug her room.  But even the holo footage shows him nothing he wants to see. Just an empty bed, muddy bootprints tracked across the floor.  
While he’s scanning the bootprint image to try to gain any info on who might have taken her, Slave I’s systems beep with an incoming message. When he reaches over to hit the activation button, his hand finds a glass flower, left over from the night before. His fingers close on it, the sharp edges pressing against, but not cutting through his gloves. The contact reminds him of how she’d bitten his finger.  
And that leads him to remembering all the thoughts that touch had given him. He hurls the glass against the far wall, and broken shards rain down, a mockery of the beauty he’d seen from the dance floor that night. Not that he was one to admire beauty. Not often.  
Only when it was coupled with her ferocity and courage.  
  
Stupid, stupid.  
He should have stopped taking these jobs a long time ago.  
He should have stopped humoring her.  
He should have admitted to himself this was a lot more than just credits to him.  
But all of those things don’t replace the fact that he’s failed.  
  
He’d thought she’d asked him to the dance as a… a what? A date? Was that what people called it? What did he know?  He hadn’t been wrong, either, with his guess that her intent was less about bodyguarding and more about lust. He might know nothing of fancy dresses, but one certainly didn't wear an ensemble like that if seduction wasn’t at least slightly on one’s mind.

  
Even as the comm connection starts to crackle on, Fett’s mind has already looped back to how Leia had looked, poured into that tight black corset,  how that skirt clung to her hips and made him think of nothing but his hands on her.  
And those useless, distracted thoughts, were what caused this whole mess.  
The CommLink clicks on.  
A Trandoshan face appears on the screen. It’s not Bossak, this one is more red-orange in color, with a draped silken robe over one scaly shoulder.  He’d never seen a Trandoshan with a flair for fashion before, and he’d die happy if he never saw one again. “Boba Fett. I, Kassek, have something you want.”  
“Really.” He keeps his voice flat,  glad for his helmet at that moment. Because he could see her, tossed in a cage, in the far corner of what was in view. Her chest rose and fell, but other than that, the Princess was motionless.  
“You ssssee her?” Kassek hisses. “Your little frrrriend is in need of your help.”  
“She means nothing to me.” As he talks, he types with his left hand, out of view of the monitor.  
“Oh? So if we kill her…” Kassek starts.  
“Then you won’t get the bounty that’s on her head,” Fett replies, having just placed it on the darknet himself. It’s a sum twice that of any job he’s taken for Leia before. Large enough to attract a rookie like Kassek, and hopefully small enough to not get other players involved. Enough to justify him rescuing her if it was only a bounty, and nothing like a romantic entanglement.  
He’s a bounty hunter. He didn’t do romance.  
“Up to you, Kassek. Seems to me you could use that cash.” He inclines his head, just slightly. “I see your ship’s an interesting sort of… relic.”  
The Trandoshan hisses again, but it was true. Fett recognizes the ship’s walls as a design that had gone out of commission at least fifty years ago. “Fett out.” he turns off the comm.  
Then, he pulls off his helmet, just to rub his face. His stubble is rough against his hand. This… this is a mess.  
  
But he can’t allow himself any more than that small moment to regain his composure. There’s work to be done. A princess to rescue. Because, even if he’s boxed up those damn emotions that the day started with, he knows it’s part of his contract to see her safely home.  
She’d paid him to be a bodyguard, after all.  
So, if he was going to go collect her, well, that was just business.  
“Shoulda listened to you, Dad,”  
How many times had he said those words, in this durasteel cell of a cockpit? Once in a while, Fett wondered if he was going to crack, under all of the time he spent alone. After all, Jango never spent nearly as much solitary time as Boba did. He’d had Zam, the Cuy'val Dar, countless other associates…  
And he’d still died, alone, with no one to fight for him. No one to avenge him, although Boba had tried.  
He tried not to think about any of that, but it lingered, decades after, in strange and subtle ways, like his dislike of the color purple. Or how his dreams were always full of rain, never-ending rain, and if not rain, then the mud and dust of a planet he never wished to go back to.  
Boba had not said the word Jedi until Leia had asked him. Like so many others alive during the Clone Wars, it was easier to pretend it was not real than admit to knowledge of the amount of suffering the galaxy held.  
Harder to forget was the amount of suffering he held, deep inside. He was a nexus of pain hidden inside a mortal body, inside impenetrable armor.  
Most days, he pretended there was nothing more to him than the armor.  
Some days, he even succeeded.  
This was turning out not to be one of those days.  
  
  
He finished setting up the hyperdrive coordinates, only to notice two new calls coming in, on two separate networks. One on his professional line, the sort that if one knew how to hire a bounty hunter, one could use. The  other message, on a line as secure, private, and dangerous as the one he’d made for Leia’s use alone.  
Fierfek.  
The oddest thing about the message is it appears to be coming from a location somehow quite close to Alderaan, and yet, not the planet itself.  
The comm channel opens. There’s no video. The caller doesn’t need it. His voice is powerful enough. “Boba Fett.”  
“Yes, Lord Vader?” He calls him Lord right now, though usually, he doesn’t address him as anything. Just takes orders, delivers goods, and gets payment. Today, though, he’s not risking anything.  
“The blood sample you provided is inaccurate.”  
Only Vader’s voice, deep, resonate, punctuated with mechanical breathing could make him shudder.  
“My apologies,” after a moment, he adds, “Lord Vader.”  He thinks back to Jango being polite to that Jedi from so long ago. Not just kicking Taun We out of the room and destroying Kenobi like he deserved.  
A tiny part of Boba’s head whispers that even in those conditions, his father might still have died at the hands of a Jedi. He ignores that logic. He’s never quite lost his adoration of his father, his belief that his father could do anything.  
Anything except survive a lightsaber’s sweeping cut.  
Under his helmet, he closes his eyes, forcing himself to focus on the present moment. “What was the problem with the blood?”  
“The blood shows she is part Nagai. We know this is not true of the Senator. Therefore, the blood sample is not the one I requested.”  
The mechanical breathing fills every bit of silence in the Slave I’s cabin. He forces himself to think of nothing, nothing but this present moment, though his mind is already re-calculating his earlier mistake. He'd been so sure that lowlife on Coruscant had been all human, but apparently not.  
“It is possible there was a different girl sleeping in her bed. You’ll have your sample. Fett, out.”  
It’s a dangerous move, to end the call before Vader gives him permission to. But for some reason, there’s always an air of, if not quite leniency from the dark lord, perhaps tension, around Boba. As if he assumes the bounty hunter knows something.  
Something that Vader desperately wants to keep hidden, but not so much so that he’d kill Boba for it.  
It’s strange, realizing that the greatest power he holds over one of the most powerful men in the universe is something he hasn’t even been able to figure out.  
Boba assumes it has something to do with the Clone Wars, with the past everyone’s been told, or punished, into forgetting. Why Vader hasn’t just killed him is beyond the bounty hunter, but it’s hard not to feel a little cocky over it all.  
Well. Some days. Right now, he’s kriffing terrified of the sonnabitch.  
He should have handed over Leia’s blood. He’d been a fool to protect the girl--no, woman. He had to admit to himself he saw her as a woman-- from whatever Vader wanted to know about her.  
A secret only her blood could show.  
Memories and theories tease the edges of his mind, but he ignores them as he goes through a weapons check. He’s got a tracer on Leia, and it’s showing her vitals… none of which are good.  
His heartbeat thuds too loud under all his armor. Damn it all.

* * *

  
The comm link buzzes angrily, and he decides to take the third message now. Zam used to say bad things came in threes. He wasn’t sure what could be worse than being caught lying to Vader, but there was no point running from it.  
“Boba Fett.”  The man’s head appears on the intercom. He looks to be about fifty, with grey hair, and a stern voice. “You will return my daughter.”  
“Haven’t seen her.” Boba’s own tone changes, dealing with this man. His voice now a little sarcastic, mirroring the smirk under his helmet. Who was Bail Organa to call him?  
Better too to be smirking, than to admit that there are emotions coiled inside of him, hiding like a space slug under all his protective gear, both that made of durasteel, and that forged by years of silence and refusal to trust.  
Bail’s next words freeze him. “Given who my daughter is, and who your primary employer is, I think me releasing videos of all of your meetings together will be quite… detrimental to your career.”  
Boba swallows, hard. Leverage or not, Darth Vader would kill him in a moment, if he knew he’d been lied to. “There are no videos.”  
But the footage that starts to play in front of him contradicts his words. The holocom shows grainy but accurate footage of every meeting, every short exchange between the two of them. Luckily, there’s no audio, which is good for his career. Easy enough to convince others, if these leak, it’s just some bastard with similar armor standing there, not him.  
Are all fathers this ridiculously concerned with their daughter's wearabouts at all times? Or is it that she is also a political figure? Would Jango have tracked down Boba this quickly, had he lived til now?  
He can't help but imagine an over-protective man in shiny, much less battered armor, leaning over his shoulder, inspecting all of his hyperspace coordinates, and has to shake his head. No. Boba doesn't know a thing about how a normal father should act.  
More relaxed now, he replies, “releasing that would end your daughter's career, to say nothing of her life.”  
“I have reasons to think that she’s in just as much danger of those things right now.” Bail replies.  
“I will release them on every channel available to me if Leia is not returned safely.” there’s a pause. “And unmarried.”  
He ends the call without answering anything the man has said. He’s too shocked to speak. Fett nearly falls out of his chair, something that’s never happened. He’s not sure if he should laugh, or swear at the man.  
Leia has been so charming,  that Bail is convinced these are romantic trysts, that his daughter is only mixed up with lust, and not politics.  
Really, the universe might be a safer place, if that was true.

* * *

  
With those three calls stewing somewhere deep in the back of his brain, Fett makes the jump to hyperspace and then starts his preparations. The ritual calms him, assures him of his purpose, his place in the universe. This is what he was trained to do, and this is what he does well. Could there be any greater purpose than that?  
He works to ensure his gear is calibrated as precisely as he wishes he could calibrate his own heart. Because no matter how soothing the ritual of checking the sight on his familiar weapons is, there's something uncomfortable under his skin, something like the pressure in the sky before a rain storm.  
Something like being sliced open by rain that looks like crystal flowers, and a moment that looked too much like true happiness.  
He growls, and gives up on the fine-tune calibration. Kossak seems to be a rookie. This will be an easy mission. He'll get in, get the princess, and get out.  
By the time the Slave I leaves hyperspace, Boba Fett is the calm, collected killer he’s well-known as, throughout the galaxy. The Princess, lying in the holding cell in the rusted ship below him is just hard merchandise, the same as any other.

  
He can make himself believe that lie, all the way until he’s boarded Kossak’s ship, and sees her small huddled body in a holding cell. He freezes, but only long enough to run a scan on her vitals. She’s alive. Poisoned, and fading fast, but alive.  
“Hand her over, Kossak.”  
Boba knows his entrance into the ship’s hull, then climb to this holding bag couldn’t have gone unnoticed. The Slave I still clung to the side of this ship like a deadly version of a mynock. His plan had been so simple, he'd made it his mantra as he'd carved his way into the ship.  
Now, he’s wondering if he’s underestimated Kossak.  
“Decided to put your armor on again, hmm?” Kossak’s claws click against the floor, as he descends an old staircase from what must be the pilot's area above.  
His back is to Fett.  
He could shoot him, and be done with him in a second.  
Which tells Fett that something else is at play here. No bounty hunter, not even this one, is that stupid. So, something else, or someone else, is behind this kidnapping.  
He gets his answer a second later.  
Pain, worse than any he can remember, shoots through his nervous system, zinging over every synapse, burning behind his eyes. “What the hell?”  
There’s laughter from above. A woman stands at the top of the deck, above the staircase. He can’t see much of her through his pain, but his helmet scan registers her as humanoid, tattooed, unknown on any data files.   
Shit.  
“It’s a special poison, my dear Fett,” she drawls. Her voice sounds like nauseatingly sweet cheap liquor. “Administered by air at the dance. What a shame you decided not to sport your ever-so-fashionable helmet at my gala.”  
No. Because he’d been a fool. A fool who’d somehow decided that standing next to Leia when he was nothing more than a man was worth the risk. And of course it hadn’t been. Because while he might have been just a man, under all his weapons and armor, she was far more than just a princess, underneath all she was.  
“What a pity you didn’t protect yourself. You were too busy staring at her. Then again, her own mother had that dress made to ensure another dangerous sort, or so the story goes.”  
“My… my mother?”  
He turns, suddenly, at the sound of Leia’s voice.  
“Fett?” the  woman calls, trying to get his attention.  
He ignores her. Instead, he smashes open the rusty holding cell. All that was between him and her was a stupidly easy to break lock. Stupidly easy, because it didn't need to hold her in.

She was the bait, and he'd fallen for the trap. But when no blasters shoot, no one attacks him, Boba dares to reach toward Leia. He needs to know she's okay, that there's still a chance of saving this mission. Leia raises her head at him. She’s got a black eye, and bruises everywhere the tattered black dress isn’t. Hatred courses through him, stronger than he has felt in a long, long time. Hatred hot enough to forget his father's warnings, that it's harder to complete a mission when the blood rage is blinding you. All of that slides away, and all he can see is her pain.  
“Boba? You’re… you’re here?”  
He struggles to find words, but can’t speak before he’s shot.  
The blast smashes into his armor. It takes the impact but knocks him back. He collides against the far wall of the cell, next to her. Kossak, from across the room, smiles toothily at him, and blows the smoke off the tip of his gun.  
Leia screams something.  
It hurts, her scream, more than anything else. More than the poison, more than the shot. Leia has screamed, because he's in pain.  
“How touching. Sadly, Leia has proved to be quite useless for my goals. Useless, for now.” The woman has descended the rest of the stairs. Fett looks up at her.  
She’s tall, clad in black, with red facial tattoos like lightning bolts over her face. He tries to remember an old rumor, of Force-sensitive beings with tattooed faces. Tries to remember really anything useful, which is hard when his whole nervous system feels like it's boiling inside his flesh. She's a witch, he decides. This poison didn't activate until he set foot on her ship. “I find sometimes watching one’s lover dies brings out all of one’s strong feelings.”  
Boba raises his hand. Not the flamethrower, not in these close quarters. But the whipcord, instead, zips from his gauntlet.  
Kossak falls to the ground, hog-tied and immobile. There. One threat down. Not, to talk care of the witch-woman, and then, to figure out how to get the poison out of his blood.  
And Leia. Had to rescue her His eyes flick back over to her prone form just as the witch whistles, shrilly.  
Five more bandits, all of assorted humanoid races, show up on the steps. He recognizes some of them as mercenaries, and not exactly cheap ones at that. This woman, whoever she is, has put a lot of money into the plan. It reminds him uncomfortably of how much Darth Vader wanted Leia's blood, of how much he got the sense the dark lord knew he couldn't simply take it for himself, almost as if he'd been afraid of angering the girl.  
But what could a man who he'd seen choke the air out of an Imp officer for just breathing too loudly (as if the bastard really had any room to talk on that subject) around him be afraid of in a teenage princess?  
It doesn't matter. The mercenaries are all aimed, and packing serious heat. More than Fett himself had brought. He'd been so sure this was a simple extraction mission, not a full-fledged combat one.  
They’ve been utterly ambushed.  
This is his fault. Kriffing hell. His fault.  
Leia says, “Fett, get out of here. Please.” She’s moved onto her knees, her whole body trembling. “It’s me she wants.”  
“Not quite.” the woman replies. “I want you, Princess, to tap into all your emotions. To channel your rage. Your beloved bounty hunter is going to die.”  
Beloved? Whoever this tattooed faced woman is, she’s out of her mind.  
One of the bandits though is aiming, and he’s not fast enough. Not now, not with whatever kriffing drug is racing through his veins. It slams into him, and this time, he feels the sizzle of raw flesh.  His armor is shattered.  
The reptoid aims.  
He sees it all in slow motion. All five of them with blasters trained on him. His blood, smearing against the jagged hole of his armor. That shot wasn’t mortal, no, it was in his side. But five against one is shit odds, even for him.  
It’s too late to formulate a plan though.  
Leia looks up, suddenly. “Leave him alone! Your business is with me.”  
The woman laughs. “Princess, you fight so hard for some backwater scum of a bounty-”  
She never finishes her sentence. Leia’s hand has shot out, grasping at the empty air. The woman claws at her throat, her words dying as her airflow shuts down.  
Leia forces herself to stand. “He. Is. A. Good. Man.”

With one hand staunching his wound, Boba finally manages to focus. He aims, shoots, and the woman drops to the ground.  
Dead. Dead from a blaster, and not whatever the hell he’d just seen.  
But it doesn’t solve the problem of the--  
Leia screams, then, not in pain, but fury. Her hands push forward, and something like a wall of power collides with the mercenaries. They fly backward, slamming against the wall.  
And Boba’s back on a dusty, stinking planet for a second, back to a gladiator game gone horribly wrong, back to a moment when he’d seen the full force of a group everyone now dismisses as myth.  
Back to a moment where he’d seen a young woman fight back against a snarling Nexu and win. A woman, who fought at the side of a Jedi…  
Anakin. Father had said his name was Anakin.  
Boba stares at Leia, now, everything finally clicking into place. The leverage he held against Darth Vader. The importance of Leia’s blood.  
The fact he’d spoken to not one, but two fathers, both searching for their daughter.  
Leia’s hand makes a grasping motion now, and summoned by her power, by that damn Force, every blaster but Boba’s flies to her feet.  
Her whole body is trembling, her breathing shallow, as she stares at the disarmed, badly injured bodies across the holding bay from her.  
Boba Fett has not seen power like that in twenty years, nor does he want to ever again. Leia opens her mouth, and this time, only a strangled little whimper of a yell comes out.  
The bodies don't move. They're all breathing.  
For now.  
“Leia.” He says her name then. Just once. Just enough for her to turn to him. Then, he moves forward, wraps his arms around her, and promptly puts a tranq shot in her shoulder.


	4. Chapter 4. Absolutes

Leia blinks up into the T-shaped visor in front of her. The pain in her shoulder, where his hand still lingers was sharp. Not wretched like the pain she’d felt for the past stars-knew-how-many hours, but a far cry from the sudden rush of warmth that spread through her body when his arms wrapped around her. It's a momentary pain, that fades, there in the silence of Kossak's ship.

All she knows, at that moment, are feelings.

She is used to feelings, to the range of emotions that she had to master, then lock away, in order to be a good princess and a better diplomat.

Sometimes, she feels a… a rage. A power… something, deeper inside of her, brewing and storming like the clouds of Bespin. Heat rages inside her, wishing to burn everything that has ever hurt her. It’s an emotion deeper than any her friends have ever expressed, deeper than even the poets describe.

Other times, she feels that same deepness inside her, but it brings her a sense of peace and purpose. It’s a feeling unlike any other, more like a dream than reality.  When her thoughts race, she can close her eyes, and imagine a world of lakes and delicate structures, a place she knows she has both never been and utterly loves. That world gives her strength.

The other place, the flames and the darkness, that gives her power. Wild, soaring power, like winning at every game of Sabaac, or landing every bullseye on a target range. Power, like nothing else, and peace, like all she craves.

A few moments ago, she’d known both. After the mercenaries had gone flying, she’d felt such a wonderful calm spread over her whole body. They're still there, crumpled against the wall. One finger on one mercenary’s hand twitches and she realizes they’re alive. At least one is. Some small part of her brain decides that’s a good thing.

“Fett?” Her voice sounds slurred, even to herself. Her knees are starting to give way. It was almost as if she’d been… did he….

He doesn’t answer. Boba Fett, she realizes, is speechless. She tries again, “I… what did I…” What did she do? Just how had that power shoved them away from her?

“I believe some, Princess,” he says, in a tone that could be matter of factual, or simply the way one’s voice sounds through a helmet, “would call it the Force.”

That’s preposterous. Jedi. A story, one no one believes. Not any more.

But is it any more unbelievable than her, being held by him, on this damned ship, lightyears from home.

The plink-plink of blood against the floor startles her back into alertness. It's coming from him, from the wound on his chest. She fights against the drowsiness racing through her body even now, to say,  “You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine.” He lets go of her, only to grip her wrist. “And we’re going.”

“Don’t manhandle me.”

He drags her arm harder, and she digs in her heels. Then, one of his knees buckles. The bounty hunter nearly tips over, and lets go of her to right himself.

He’s hurt, badly. No matter how he acts. “Fine. but I go of my own free will.”

She’s not quite sure that’s hers to even reference, anymore. Is it still free will, if one is more concerned with someone else than all her previous plans? The witch had said that Leia cared more for one man than all of the rebellion. She’d sworn it wasn’t true, swore until her voice went hoarse… but only for Fett did that strange power come to her.

 _It is always easier to be strong for someone else_ , her head and heart say in harmony, though her head adds, _but better to be strong for those who are weaker than you._

A moment later, she passes out.

 

> * * *
> 
>  

In the blackness of her unconsciousness, she sees nothing. However, she hears more than she ever has before. The two voices she thinks of as her head and her heart, those are silent. Instead, a cacophony of voices storms down upon her, swirling through her mind. Shouting, and angry phrases, are thrown back and forth. Leia strains to listen, like she used to, when her parents argued behind closed doors. The only arguments they ever had were over her.

 _Tell her._ Breha used to say. _She needs to know the truth._

 _And what if it destroys her?_ Bail had replied.

She’d thought it was about her adoption, back then, a secret that had unraveled quite quickly once she’d thought about it. After all, the sad eyes of the beautiful woman that she dreamed of… those were not Breha’s eyes.

They were her mother’s eyes.

Beautiful, but sad. Only now does Leia consider that which made her mother sad might also be the thing that Bail so feared, the thing that could destroy Leia. There is a deeper secret, underneath all the ones she already knows. Now, Leia listens to these new voices, desperate for more information. Wondering if the secret will crack, in this strange place between dreaming and awakening.

“Too old.” A grumpy voice says, with all the dismissal of an old man shutting a door

“Untrained.” A second voice agrees

Squinting, she can barely make out a circular room, with chairs all around her. She stands, and the voices swirl around her like a cloak around bare shoulders.

“As he will be.”

“But she’s-”

“Why Master Windu,” a voice says, and if she squints, she can almost see the twin tails of a Togruta woman.  “Are you implying females are weaker?”

Leia growls, agreeing with that voice, and ready to fight the others. Not sure why it matters, but only knowing it is enough to know she is powerful, and she will fight. For what, she’s not sure.

“I am still not sure why we let this one join us,” a voice says, and Leia can make out the shadow of a head, nodding at the Togruta. “Is she not banished?”

“I’m not even sure if I’m dead,” the woman replies, flippantly. “But I am here. And I stand by her. I believe in her.”

“Too much her father’s daughter, she is.” That first grumpy voice says.

“My father is a good a man!” Leia yells. “You know nothing!”

 _Bail Organa is not your father_ , whispers her heart.

 _More father than any other she has,_ snaps her head.

There are too many voices now, inside her and around her. Her emotions are too big for this body, this room, this moment. She screams, seeking that peace she’d felt so briefly, before.

* * *

 

Her eyes open. She’s sitting on a chair, in a ship that is cold, and sparse, and… his. She knows it with every bit of her senses. This clean, simple room must be the interior of the Firespray-31-class ship she’s seen a few times before. She's freezing could, in all that remains of the dress. A bodice, and a tangle of shreds of the skirt, barely enough to be proper... if the way that dress fit could have ever been called proper. Falling asleep in such a tight dress had been her first mistake. It had been impossible to kick Kossak, when he'd scooped her out of her bed. She'd clawed at him instead, breaking her painted nails against his scaly skin. Then, she had screamed, but no one had come.

No one, until Boba Fett had showed up.

Now, he kneels across from her, working on a panel inset into the wall. He’s still in his broken armor, which tells her it couldn’t have been very long since she fainted. Boba Fett is surely the type of person to replace a broken wrist gauntlet in minutes.

She stands on shaky feet, intent on crossing the room to him.

He flicks a switch, and the ship gives a mighty lurch. She staggers, smashing into him. They collide to the floor, and she can’t breathe. Not because she’s in pain, but because his arms have wrapped around her, holding her to his chest, keeping her safe.

Which mean his armor took the full impact. It’s such an… uncharacteristic thing for him, to hold her, that her blush begins up near her ears and ends somewhere close to her toes. “Alright, Fett, unhand me. What the hell did you do?”

“Saved your skull from this metal floor.”

“Not what I meant.” She pulls herself up and looks out the view window. It’s a narrow bar in this room, clearly meant for him, not whoever he’d pen in the cage across the room from her. The stars streak by, and the ship she’d been kidnapped into remains attached to the base of the Slave I. “We’re in hyperspace.”

“Yeah. Bastard had it hard-coded to some destination. Can’t rewire it. Not yet anyway.”

She’s never thought of him as technically savvy, someone who gets his hands wet with more than blood. But as she watches he starts to pull wires and tap keys, in a way that she finds all too alluring.

When she was a child, she’d wanted to grow up to be a mechanic. She liked the way they fixed things, and that they knew how every part of something far more complex fit together. Loved the way the welding tools would make it seem as if someone caught a star, and made it handsized, as if fixing the ship with the essence of space itself.

It’s nice watching him, even if her body felt like a bantha stomped on it. He looks a little worse for wear too; there’s a blaster wound right through his chest plate, and the bacta patch he’s applied doesn’t hide that the wound beneath is severe. There’s the smallest glimpse of warm brown skin near the wound, and Leia realizes it’s the first time she’s ever seen his skin.

She tries hard not to imagine what the rest of him looks like.

“That should do it.” He mutters.

“I can go down and…” she starts, thinking of where they’d left. That leads to wondering how exactly they got here, and the fact she can’t answer that bothers her deeply. She pushes the tangle of her long hair out of her eyes.

“Go down where?”

“To his...  cargo area.” They’re on Fett’s ship, but the Tradoshan’s is still attached to theirs. It must be some trick Fett has, to latch his ship on to another. “They’re probably alive still. I could try to…” she waves her hands. “Again”

“No!” And his helmet does not come close to hiding his emotions. There’s… fear in his voice.

Whatever she’d done (she’s not sure she’s willing to call it the Force, not yet,) has terrified him. It’s a power she’s never dreamed of, and one she’s not sure she wants.

He walks away from her then. “You, stay here.” He points at the empty room, barely more hospitable than the cage she’d been locked in.

“No! Get back here!”

The door click shut.

“Fett!”

He doesn't answer.

A moment later, there is a mighty groan of metal. The ship below them detaches and falls away, tumbling into the reality-crushing wilds of hyperspace. That must have been what he was working on. A second later, she knows every soul who had seen her use her powers, besides Fett, are lost forever.

But it’s Leia who feels the most lost.

* * *

 

The door he exited from isn’t locked. It surprises her, but only for a moment. Fett’s a man who deals in absolutes. She’s always liked that about him. If she is aboard his ship and not a prisoner, it makes sense that he would not lock her into one room. At least, she thinks it makes sense if she’s thinking like him.

And that alone is enough to make her headache reappear with a vengeance.

The man at the helm of the ship is confident, tan. Dark haired. The shirt he has on reveals very muscled arms, and a back that she can’t help but imagine running her hands down.

Is she hallucinating? She’s felt so odd, since the whole… thing… with the...feeling that certainly couldn’t have possibly the force. She’s not a Jedi Knight. This is no storybook tale for children. She’s just a Princess, trying hard to be a rebel, fighting to fix a universe that seems more broken the more she explores it. The red-tattooed witch’s face has not left her memory. Not yet.

Who was that woman, to plot such a complex deception? And what had she wanted? Leia had offered money, a reward sure to turn any mercenary’s head, but the witch had been unswayed.

And when Leia’s hand had pulled the air from her lungs (how she still doesn’t know. Refuses to think about what knowing how to do that would mean), the witch had...smiled.

She’d died smiling when Fett shot her.

Leia knew it wasn’t for the witch’s sake that Fett had taken the kill, and that both bothers her and warms her heart. She’ll have to kill for the Rebellion soon, she knows that. Time has run out for the little deceptions she’d played. Soon, she would trade her ballgowns for blasters, and fight at the side of those brave soldiers already dying for the cause.

Soon, but not yet. First, she had to get home.

An image of that planet with domed roofs and waterfalls crosses her mind. She shakes her head. Alderaan is home.

“Can you plot a course to Alderaan? Not Coruscant?” she asks.

He turns to look at her, and whatever short amount of breath she had left is utterly snatched away, just like she’d pulled it from the witch’s last moments.

It’s him.

The man who stood beside her at the dance. Fett was a man of absolutes, and Fett was a bounty hunter who kept his word. He had been there. He’d seen here, in the dress that now clung to her in scandalous tatters… and he had not been swayed.

It might be easier to move the universe than to impress Boba Fett.

“What?” he asks, his hand rubbing the back of his neck in such a human gesture it stuns her. There are a few scars on his forearms, and one on his cheek, just above his sharp jawline, peppered with dark stubble. His curly hair, which at the dance had been at least brushed, though surely not styled, was now a tousled mess, a little softer than she’d ever imagine his hair to be. It’s the only thing soft about him, though. His brown eyes are cold, and his whole body is muscular as if carved from living rock. “You’re handsome.” she blurts out. “I had no idea.’

One of his eyebrows raises, and she wonders just how many time he’s made that expression before, hidden under the mask. “Neither did I.”

“I just. I… I'm sorry.” She steadies herself with one hand on the wall, as the room lurches around her. It shouldn’t move like this. Hyperspace should be smooth. Maybe it’s not the room. Maybe it’s her?  Besides, he seems fine, from where he’s standing.

HIm. Boba Fett. Dressed in plain clothes, watching her. She manages to say,  “I need a moment.”

 

He cuts across the cabin, tilts her head up. Her heart goes faster than an astromec droid repairing mid-battle. Can droids repair hearts? Could they make her stop feeling whatever this is? This heat that burns through her whenever he's near?

The flames inside her heart  tell her to grasp the emotion. To use it. To destroy with it.

The cool waters of her head whisper to hold gently to the feeling. Not to forget it, but to treat it as precious and delicate.

Fett moves closer. Close enough to kiss.

_Not a weapon._

_A weapon._

The two debate, over and over, this emotion that she has never felt before.

_Not a…_

He stares at her, his face expressionless, but so close that she can see the small lines in the corners of his eyes, a hint of that age difference that had worried her, before.

She’s not worried about that now.

Not at all.

But Fett is apparently not going to kiss her, regardless of her interior monologue. All he’s doing is staring into her eyes. “Concussion” he finally says.

“What?”

“Your eyes are dilated. Concussion.”

“But that's… eyes do that for other things too.” Her face is red, and she can’t believe she’s stammered that out.

“What, found Kossak's spice stash?”

There’s a twist of emotion on his face. A tiny lift to half of his lips. A… smile?  Was that his smile? “Is that a joke?”

“Concussed.” He says, with surety.

“Wait. Fett. Did you make a joke?”

“Med room, princess. Now.”

“No. I’m not going anywhere. I… I have to see the map stars. The map of stars. The stars.”

He folds his arms, watching her rapidly lose her sense of any words. Then, he points at the door.

She takes a step forward.

He growls, just a little, and scoops her up. A little voice in the back of her brain tells her this is the third time he’s carried her like this since they’ve met. She’s not a doll, she wants to insist. Her legs work just fine.

But it feels good to be held. Her cheek rests against his warm chest, close to his bandages, and his steady heartbeat is a welcome song to her. “You’re warmer without your armor,” she mumbles.

He doesn’t say anything. Not for a long time, as he maneuvers into a small room off to the side of his cockpit. There’s a small, simple bed in one corner, one chair, a desk, and…

“holobooks?”

He shrugs.

“That’s a lot of books.” They filled four shelves from the desk to the ceiling, each one neatly slotted into place. On the desk is a half-repaired blaster, which is far more fitting for what she expected to find in his room. Not that she ever expected to be in his room.

“I like to read.”

It’s so odd, so outlandishly normal, that she starts to laugh.  A moment later, she’s aware that his chest shakes too, just a little, his mirth so contained that it is silent. Like a spring rain, it fades suddenly too, and there is no proof that Boba Fett has ever laughed.

 

He sets her on the simple bed, and pulls a blue blanket over her. “I thought you weren’t supposed to put a concussed person to bed,” she mutters. The blanket is woolen, and a little itchy. The fact that it’s blue, and clearly handmade, in this room of cold metal and technology, shocks her a little bit. It reminds her of the night she bit his finger, the proof she had needed of his humanity.

"I'm making an exception for you." He pauses, and then his hand moves to her hair, which has fallen out of its braids into a messy tangle. Carefully, but effiecently, his fingers work through the brown waves, in a way that sends shivers down her spine. "Which seems to happen a lot."

She can't quite bring herself to mutter an apology, not when he's touching her like that. His hands are warm, and sure, and she realizes that he's sat down next to her to twist her locks into a thick, simple braid. Not the type a hair stylist might make, but the way someone would braid together thin ropes. He mutters, "hair like this is damn impractical."

"And yet, you don't appear to be cutting it off," she manages to say, in a flirty tone she copies from Winter.

"Don't give me any ideas." He mutters. When he's done, he re-ties the braid with a scrap of ribbon that her dress had apparently shed onto the bed. "You'd probably strangle yourself if i didn't do this."

"Ah, yes, the fate of many woman back home. All of us, risking our lives every night, with our loose waves of long hair." It's easier to be flippant with her eyes closed.

"You sleep with your hair in a braid." 

It's such an off-handed comment, but it reveals so much. Her heart stutters, just a bit. How many nights had he watched her sleep, then? Just how many times had the shadows she'd thought she'd seen in the corners, actually been him? The bounty hunter doesn't seem to realize that he's made that clear. He's probably as exhausted as her, if not more, given his agonized screams back on Kossak's ship. He clears his throat. "There's some shirts... in that closet..." he nods at one by the bed. "If you can't sleep in... that thing."

That thing was once a dress she'd risked her life to own, but she supposes there's no point in arguing about that. However, he also doesn't seem to be planning on leaving her alone to change, if she desires, so she says, "I'm fine."

Then, he stands up, the bed creaking under him.

Her hand catches his shirt, tugging him close. “Stay,” she whispers.

He freezes. His eyes are so dark, so guarded.  “You will stay.” she tries again, feeling the ripple of power.

He tenses, as if she’s hit him. His breathing goes a little shallow, in a way that reminds her too much of the one time Bail took her hunting. The way the frightened animals had looked up at her, with that same emotion… that had been enough for her to swear off meat, a habit she still follows to this day.

 _A gentle soul_ , Breha had said, rubbing her back as she’d cried. She’d looked up, and asked if that was like her mother. Her real mother.

That was the day Breha and Bail learned she remembered the eyes of the woman who had given birth to her, and made her swear to never mention such a thing again.

“I’m sorry!” she bursts out. “I’m sorry. Boba, I…”

“You have no control over it, do you?”

“Over what?” she demands, and her bones shake with her fury and confusion. “I just don’t want to be alone. That’s all. That’s all I want.” Tears are streaming down her face.

He’s still considering her. He leans a little closer, closer… and then, something in his trouser pocket lights up. He curses, the colorful sort of cursing she’s heard at the Sabaac table. It’s the lights of a comm device, like the one he gave her.

Stupid me, she realizes, to think that she was the only one who he had trusted with a private line. He must use them for all his repeat clients.

That’s all she was to him.

A client.

A stack of credits.

Even the witch had seen more in her. Had screamed at Leia about her power, her potential. But the witch was dead, and in this moment, Leia was powerless, so what did it matter?

Without giving her any answer as to what she might not be able to control (which, to be fair, at that moment feels like everything) or any indication he’s coming back, he gets up.

The comm device is in his hand before the door opens. It's strange, to see his hands do the same things she is so used to those gloves doing. To know the man beneath the armor is real, and far more complex than the dream she'd had of him. Boba Fett might be a man of absolutes, but he is also very much a real man, of flesh and blood and desires.  “Fett here.”

There’s only a moment of the answer before the heavy door cuts it off. Leia overhears no words. Instead, what she hears is worse.

The calm, methodical breathing of Lord Vader.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bookish Boba is my favorite--I loved those easy-reader post Attack of the Clones books that showed he loved books, and I've kept that headcanon ever since.


	5. Answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia finally understands just what everything has been leading her toward. Fett makes a choice

_Vader._

Boba Fett has a direct commlink to the most dangerous man in the Empire. Leia shivers. The coarse blue blanket which had felt so warm and scratchy before now feels as thin as paper. What business could they have together? She shakes her head, annoyed at her own foolishness. Boba is a bounty hunter. Lord Vader must send him on the same tasks that Leia herself devises, only for the opposing side. That thought cuts off her breath.

_Vader._

Stories said he used the Force. That he was a dark Jedi, a follower of an old, long-gone religion, a monster. And if Fett was to be believed, she too had used the Force today. Did that make her a monster too? She didn’t want to be a monster. She had just wanted to help people.

 _That’s how it always starts,_ her head whispers. _You must not let good intentions lead you astray._

Her heart, for once, answers with nothing but a deep, aching pain.

The pain reverberates through her body, marrying with all the aches from today. Or tonight? Is it still the night? How long has it been since she stood at that dance, watching rain fall like glass and the universe spin around her?  
Too long. Far too long since she’s been home. But where is home, really? It's not Coruscant. Not now. Not now that she's left it, and seen just how silly she'd been, trying to gamble a way to a better future. Was it Alderaan, then? Her peaceful, beautiful planet? If so, then maybe her home is locked away in the past, impossible to reach. 

Leia falls asleep, her hand to her heart, counting every beat, and turning each into a plea. _Not evil. Not like him. Not evil. Not like Vader._

 

* * *

 

While she sleeps, she does not hear those voices, that council of judgement, again.  Instead, it is her vision that seems desperate to share with her. Images flash before her.

A cold cell, sterile and frigid as a tomb.

A battered old Corellian ship.

The face of a man, that first she sees as Boba, as the man she’d fallen for without ever knowing, but the face changes. Softens. Youthens, just a little. Brown eyes fade to hazel. Voices whisper. Whirling snow spins around her... She feels rough hands, calloused, but trying to hard to be gentle, as they touch her.

Hears, finally, her name whispered. _Leia._

The hands aren’t Boba’s. They’re pilot’s hands, that much she knows. And the voice…

_Who’s there?_

_Someone who loves you._

That was her own voice, she realizes with a shiver. Answering a question that makes so little sense to her, teasing her with a love that she doesn’t know.

And won’t ever. He’s someone else, this man, that she might have loved.

Someone that perhaps she might have met.

Not now.

Not with all that she’s feeling inside, all that’s been awakened inside her.

It’s time to say goodbye. The dream is giving her that chance, she understands. It gives her all the love she could have known, and the heartbreak too. The aching emptiness she’s never before felt, and never wants to again.

She could have loved him. Whoever he was.

Not now.

Some hands are only dealt once in a lifetime. This is one of those times. A different future teases her. All she has to do is reach out, and touch someone she’s never met, cling to a memory of a dream until reality fades.

_It’s not too late to change._

She shakes her head. The dream does not only show her joy, after all. Steam and tears mingle in her vision for a moment, as she screams like her heart has been torn out.

It’s that same pain she felt when the witch hurt Boba. Her heart, so capable of deep passion, is capable of incredible mourning too, carrying the weight of loss enough to break a weaker person.   Only this time, it’s being told to her. She knows she’s not really in pain. That she can’t mourn someone she’s never met.

But it feels so real. It could have been real. 

Not now.

 She stands in the snow, white as the sky above, white and cold and so empty, and whispers, “I am not the Leia you wanted.” The wind steals her words from her. No one hears, but no one was ever there, either.

 

* * *

When she wakes, Boba Fett is sitting on a crate across from her. He doesn't look completely asleep, but he’s a little more at ease, if he ever can be said to be at ease. The small lines around his lips, (she can’t call them laugh lines for a man who’s laughed fewer times than a ship has been able to escape a black hole) are faded in his calmness, and his folded arms have less tension in them than she’d thought possible. There’s a holopad on the small desk near him that hadn’t been there when she’d fallen asleep.

She shifts a little in the bed, and his eyes open, just a fraction. “You really said it, didn’t you?” he asks.

“What, map star?’” she drawls, rubbing her eyes. Her limbs feel very heavy.

He makes that almost smile again. It makes her head spin, and for a moment, she’s back in the blizzard of the dream, completely lost.

She throws out a hand, knowing without words what she wants. And it answers. The holopad shoots across the room, and into her open palm.

Boba leans away, a gesture as sudden as any he’ made in battle, but without his armor, he can’t hide the matching expression.

_Fear._

He’s terrified of her. Of what she can do. Just as afraid as she’d been of Vader.

That must be why he doesn’t yank the holopad back. Why he just watches her as she looks down at the messages displayed. The recipient is Bail Organa. Her father. Boba Fett had spoken to her father. Any curiosity she has over that is squelched by the last three messages. All of them are from Boba.

_“Respond.”_

_“She’s safe. Respond.”_

_“I repeat. Leia Organa is safe.”_

Her gaze flicks up to him for a moment. He doesn’t move. His arms are still crossed, but tightly now, showing all the muscle in them. He’s not sitting like a man perhaps a little interested in the woman in his bed. There's no desire in his eyes. He’s watching her like she’s the predator in the room. Not treating her like she’s an injured princess he needs to return to her father. No. Leia is more than that now, and knows it.

So does Fett. Because the other tab on the holopad proves that he was searching for answers. The same answers she needed. It displays a few holophotos, clearly pulled from old surveillance droids. The images are just fuzzy stills of a young man with a blond braid and a woman with warm eyes. A woman whose eyes she’s seen before, though no one ever believed her.

Boba Fett clears his throat. "They are..."

"My parents," she whispers. If before she knew fear, now, all she knows is shock. Boba Fett does nothing as Leia looks down at her parents for the first time. They were so young, whoever they were, so young, and at least, in the survillence photos, stolen from a moment they would have never known to be recorded, so happy.  But Leia knows at least her mother had not died that happy. And if her father was a Jedi, (of course he was a Jedi. It explained everything.) then he too, must have died, alone and uncared for, as the warriors they were became myths.

For the first time, though, her parents are real to her, and not myths.

 

 _Hello, dear_ , says her head, with the voice of the woman with the sad eyes.

 _You found us_ , comments her heart, and she knows now it is the voice of the Jedi in the photo.

They’d never been her head and her heart. They were memories, ghosts of people she yearned to know. The holopad slides out of her hands as the past overtakes her. She remembers too much, now, all of her mother’s last moments, her twin, not wanting to be away from either of them, the voice of Bail Organa…

Her twin?

Her brother!

She has a brother!

That same power ripples through her again. She’s furious again. Not at her kidnappers, no, but at her family. At everyone who has ever lied to her, who kept all this from her. She had family. She still has a brother. And no one has told her. Rage courses with every pulse of her heart. Her fists clench, nails making red crescents in her skin as she breathes deeply, yearning to fight. But who is there left to fight?

 

* * *

 

There is a hand on her shoulder, a real hand, on her real shoulder, pulling her away from all the memories some part of her brain, that part that can make the impossible happen, seemed to have trapped and locked away. The voice shouts again, “Leia. LEIA!”

The voice is familiar. The name, clearly very familiar also. But the two together…

He’s never called her by her name before.

But there he is. Boba Fett Holding her hands in his. “What…” she begins. All around them, are floating things. Gauze pads. Bacta packs. ALl of it, suspended in mid air, bobbing around as if the ship’s gravity-engines have suddenly failed. Or perhaps, it is Leia’s self-control that has failed. She can’t figure out how to make the items fall back in place, any more than she can figure out how to control her breathing, which is still fast and shallow, as if she’s run a race.

Fett says, “I’m going to tranq you.”

Leia sighs. “Oh good.” It’s not until the needle slips into her skin that she realizes he said tranq  and not, well, kiss. She could really use a kiss. Especially from him.

 

That’s her last thought before the voices come back. Not her parents. No. She realizes she’s heard only echoes of them, some last wish they had to know their daughter. They’re gone now. Her parents are gone. Is her brother gone too? Or is he alive?  
Could he hear her, if she yelled for him in this strange dream? She thinks she might even know his name, if she tries hard enough. It’s just out of reach, just a whisper away.

But the shadowy council grows too loud, drowning out her thoughts.

 “I don’t want to be here!” she yells, as if anyone will listen to her. She wants to wake up. She wants Boba to hold her hands again. Oh, stars, she wants him to kiss her. Wants it enough that she thinks she might shatter from the yearning.

“See, see?” one voice practically crows. “Undone by lust she is.”

“Master Yoda, I hardly think…”  
“It is true,” that Togruta says, the one who previously Leia thought was on her side. “Love is dangerous, especially when it’s for someone who is so…”

Three voices all chime in at the same time.

“Dangerous.”

“Unsuitable.”

“Monstrous.”

Leia thought the last one was most certainly unfair, since Boba, without his helmet, didn’t look anything like a monster. And really, what right did this strange ghostly cabal have to critique her love life, anyway?

The  Togruta snaps a reply in the same tone Leia wanted to use, “I was actually just going to say mercenary, thank you very much.”

“A mercenary who was raised by one who loved him,” a new voice cuts in. Gentle. Female. Full of heartache. Not her mother, though. Another woman, who has loved and lost.

“You should NOT be here.” that imperious voice booms.

“I died a Jedi. Leave me be.”

_Died? Has Leia died? Are all the voices Jedi?_

“And what of the one she cares for? Good, he is not.”

“He is a skilled fighter.” the woman says. “And others sensitive to the Force are born to those of his blood. My son…”

“Not discussing him, we are.” the voice says.

“Boba Fett is a skilled enough fighter to kill Jedi.” A man says, coldly. “Need I remind anyone gathered here?”

“Not without good reason” Another new voice.

  _How many voices can one head really hold?_ she wonders.

The new speaker’s tone is warm, and polished, and caring. Almost, almost, almost familiar. But to consider it is to feel fever begin to rage. She’s burning up. Burning. Dying.

No. Not dying.

She’s going to live. She’s going to wake up, find her brother, and stop the Empire’s reign of Terror. She’s going to save everyone. Save. Not die. No one’s going to die.

“Master Kenobi, how...”

There. A name she knows. General Kenobi. A friend of her father’s, a hero, and… the man who gave her to the Organa’s. The man who stayed with her twin, her brother, her only family. Leia grits her teeth, desperate to remember at least this when she wakes.

“I seem to have become quite gifted in meditation in my advanced years, Etain.”

There’s the smallest flash of light, a glimpse of playful blue eyes in an old, weathered face. The man’s voice softens. “I should not have let that boy be lost to the stars and revenge. It is our fault he is who is he has become. Perhaps, perhaps this is the universe righting itself. The man whose father was taken by Jedi, and the woman whose father--:

“Enough. Enough, you say,” that strange, sing-song voice, which speaks in such an odd pattern. “So, it is. So, shall be. Waking, she is, and sleeping, shall the other be. Lost, lives will be.:”

Leia lets out a strangled whimper. No. She’s got to save everyone.

“That will always be the case in war. Let her go. Let her follow her destiny.” It’s the woman’s gentle voice. Etain. Her name was Etain, and she had a son. She's a mother. A mother who loved and lost, just like Leia’s own mother.

That ancient, strange voice speaks one more time. “Destiny? Bah. Destiny, what is? Nothing, nothing. Stars and charts and hopes and failure. Fools, fools, are we all, saying things. Destiny. Bah. Fighting. Bah. See, we shall, what makes she of herself. See, we shall, if she is to burn or to soar. Hers, the choice is. Not destiny’s.”

 

* * *

 

With that, Leia wakes up, gasping. She’s drenched in sweat. And the bounty hunter, the man with the dark eyes, and the mouth that does not know how to smile, is still sitting at her side. He holds a cold compress to her forehead.

She looks at him, for the first time, with clear eyes. “You stayed.”

Boba Fett nods, the smallest bit. Leia’s gaze travels down his arm, the one not on her forehead, and notices what he’s holding. It, like her dreams, is a relic of a time she’d thought little more than a bedtime story. It’s a lightsaber.

_Skilled enough to kill Jedi._

He does not follow her gaze down to it, and when she looks up at him, he is still staring at her. He asks, “did you mean it?”

That question, again.

What could she have said that he felt such a need to repeat? “I’m sure I muttered countless things in my sleep.” Although she certainly hopes she hasn’t. She can’t explain the voices of the council to herself any more than she could to him. They were real people, somehow, connected with her, though they were dead and she was not.

He shakes his head, a gesture as small as the nod. “Did you mean, what you said to your father?”

Father. The word is enough to cause a piercing pain between her eyes, as if her skull might split. She conjures up her father’s face, forces herself to try and remember what she could have possibly said to Bail Organa that would matter to a bounty hunter.

She comes up with nothing. She’s more worried about that holopad, about the messages that were never answered, her father’s silence…

“You said it twice. One might assume that means you mean it, but in my line of work, I don’t assume.”

Twice. Not to her father then. Both of them are too busy to ever repeat themselves.

And then, it clicks.  She knows, just as certain as she knows it really is the Force inside her. “Yes. You are.” she bites her lip, but only for a second. “I meant it then and I mean it now.”

His hand reaches out. The cold compress has been dropped, so now, it’s just his open palm, touching her check. His hand is warm, and it is, she realizes, all she wants. Him. this hand, this touch, this man.

“You are a good man.” She says it again, knowing now that was what he referred to. Was that, then what scared him, even more than her use of the Force? His potential for good? The same as her potential for evil? Because she could feel that potential just under her skin. All she’d have to do is give in to the rage again…

He asks, “why?”

“Because you are true to yourself. You do not harm, unnecessarily, and you, I think, deep down inside, wish this universe was a better place.”  
He shakes his head. “You’ve got two out of three right, princess.”  
Her heart sinks, all the way down, cracking and smashing as it falls. But then, just before it hits the hungry flames, waiting, waiting for the spark to give permission to destroy it all, his lips brush against hers.

Softly.

Far softer than she’d expected, though the hand sliding to the back of her neck is not soft, and the thoughts racing through her head are anything but innocent.

He pulls away suddenly. “No. It’s you who believes that. And it’s you who can do something to make that happen.”  He goes to the doorway, his booted feet clicking solidly against the floor of the ship. “I’ll get you back to Alderaan safely, princess.”

“Call me Leia, please.”

His eyebrow rises once more in a wordless rebuttal. Fine then. Two can play at that game. She pulls out the haughty tone she uses to mock Tarkin, after long and boring meetings. “If it would please you, Boba, to refer to me as such, I would dearly appreciate that courtesy.”

And there. Finally. Both corners of his mouth turn up. Just for a second. A real smile.

He opens the door.  “Leia?” he says the name as if he’s said it all his life, and she finds she hopes he will for the rest of it.

“Yes?”

“You make a better warrior than a diplomat.”

It’s a strange comment, one that she can’t quite wrap her mind around. One that she’s not even given enough time to think about, before he says, “Catch.”

Something shiny arcs through the air, and lands in her outstretched hand, as if it belongs there, because it does, because it belongs there as much as her name belongs on his smile.

Her thumb finds a way to ignite the weapon. It springs to lift with a hum that reverberates in her bones. The pale blue light suddenly becomes the only thing she can see in the room. It’s soft, and yet, so deadly.

Just like that kiss had been.

 “And you?” she asks, her face still illuminated by the pale blue glow. “Are you still a simple man just making his way in the universe?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

She turns off the lightsaber with a click and tucks it into the tattered belt of the ruined dress. Her mother’s dress, she realizes. That was why the voice had led her to the apartment, to give her a chance to know more about the life she had led, before…

Before love had destroyed it all.

Flames dance in the edges of her vision. She takes one steadying breath and then another. Pushes the past away for now.

She’ll deal with it later. Tomorrow. Then, she’ll ask her father for details. She’ll find out more about General Kenobi, and demand to know about her brother.

Tomorrow, she’ll get her answers from Boba too. Because Leia still has questions; what he was doing with Vader, why he was speaking to her father, but for now, all those fade as she crosses the room, to where he stands in the doorway.

“You are many things, Boba Fett,” Leia whispers, lifting her gaze up to meet his. “But simple is not one of them.”

His arms wrap around her suddenly, and he kisses her again. This time there’s nothing gentle in his touch, and she responds the same way. Desperately hungry for him, for power, for all that her body yearns for, and now, suddenly, seems within her grasp.

Any fear she has of being seen as a monster burns away in the way his fingers rove over her body, still so exposed in the tatters of the dress. His kisses, warm, and so incredibly real, the stubble on his jaw brushing against her tender skin, as he presses his lips to her neck, where her blood pulses fast.  
He’s seen her do impossible things.

She’s seen his face.

They’ve both had to come to terms with all those things meant. Now, she realizes, they travel on the same path, their desires finally united. She presses forward, just a little, so her hips rock against him, and his back pushes against the wall. She likes that, taking just a little bit of control in this moment of reckless passion.

With the way he growls, it’s clear he enjoys it too.

Which is good, because now that she’s had her first taste of her power, she doesn’t plan on backing down anytime soon.

His hands finally find a way to slide under the leather corset, so his thumbs can stroke the curve of her hipbones, offering more.

Stars, does she want all that he offers.

But not yet.

Soon, though, she decides, kissing him once more.

Finally, she pulls back, and asks “to Alderaan then?”

“To Alderaan,” he agrees. His tone, like always, is curt, businesslike, efficient. But his expression, the intensity in his gaze, that belongs only to her, to this moment. He’s given her more than a weapon, more than the chance to see him as the man he is. He’s given her his trust.

She smiles.

The universe waits for them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaand... credits!  
> In all seriousness, this was my planned ending. However, I've since had lots of plot bunnies to keep this story going throughout the original trilogy timeline. It rests in the hands of you, dear rarepair fans, to let me know if you want more! Your comments shall determine if this fic keeps going!  
> Either way, thank you so much for all your support throughout my first multi-part fic. It's been a blast.


	6. For Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so, so, so much for your comments and encouragement to keep going with this fic! I really enjoy writing these two characters, but I enjoy sharing them with you even more. Buckle up, because we're just getting started.

What is he thinking?  Boba Fett  can’t believe he’s really doing this,  that he’s caught the _fierfeking_ Princes of Alderaan in his arms and he’s kissing her like she belongs to him. Kissing him the way a drowning man tries to swim, foolishly and desperately, and damned.

Her mouth is so warm, so gentle against his.  That’s the way she is. She’s always made him aware of his roughness, of things he never considered himself lacking before. Everything about her is so delicate, so soft, so _expensive._ The remnants of her silk skirt brush against him in a way that is far too gentle for what he wants to do to her. It would be easy, too easy, to yank it off her and spin her back to the wall. He’s not used to this, to how little she’s wearing, how aside from that damned lightsaber in her belt she’s so unarmed. When he’s gotten into these entanglements before, there’s always the brinksmanship of who will be the first to disarm, the first to shed a bit of armor to allow the other to reach their skin. Leia doesn’t have any armor. Not the kind one can remove easily, at least. Her armor’s all in the coldness of her tone, the chill in her smile.

But there’s nothing cold about her now as she presses against him. Instead, it’s Fett who wishes he left his armor on, even his helmet. Anything to protect him from feeling her body against his. His hunger for her is enough to make his body betray his better judgement. There’s no way that ruined dress is thick enough for her not to feel him pressing in that soft space between her hips. No way to hide how much he wants her.

Maybe he’s the one with the concussion, he decides suddenly, as they pause in their kissing.  Maybe this is all the fault of brain damage. It’s a good explanation as any for why his hands are on those wicked little hips of hers, his thumbs on the hard crescent-shaped bone that he really wouldn’t mind tasting, following the curve downwards…

_Fierfek_. He groans, and hits his head back against the doorway behind him, which would be terrible for his concussion,

If he had one.

Which he knows, deep inside, that he doesn’t. Knows that all his medical stats tested as healed or healing from the attack, that there was no outlier in the data for his blood pressure or heart rate. Whatever poison the witch had used is already out of his system… and has been replaced with a very different drug.  

One no less intoxicating than any death stick or glitterstim, and just as dangerous. Actually, for him, it was more so. Because he could use technology to filter out particles from his bloodstream, or take any of the expensive counter-acting pills he kept on hand for accidental intake of a drug, to regain his critically important clear thought. But there was nothing he could do, no antidote to take for the desire racing through him right now.

He wants  her. He wanted her badly enough he’d given her…

Too much. He’d given her too much, and he knows it.

Given her answers to questions she’d never asked him, given her a weapon that could strike him down. And why? Because… because she needed them, and he wanted her to need him.

Damn it all.

He was weak. Weak, a fool, no better than a young boy staring at a beautiful woman with useless starstruck eyes.  And she was beautiful, now more than ever, with the red in her cheeks and the fire in her eyes. Her hands were so small, so soft on the back of neck, and yet, they’d been hands that could have choked men to death. Her power drew him in as much as it terrified him. As long as he was kissing her, she seemed human, normal, breakable. But the moment this ended, the moment they’d go back to their respective duties, he would know that the universe had become just a little more dangerous.

And it was all his fault.

But he hadn’t expected the results that his scan on Leia’s past had revealed. Hadn’t expected his work using the records that he was given access to as one of the Empire’s _preferred_  bounty hunters to reveal so much about her. And he damn well hadn’t expected Vader to demand a blood sample of hers as a bounty, with timing  far too eerily close to when Fett had figured out her birth mother’s identity. A birth mother too connected to names from his own past. _Kenobi. Windu. Skywalker._

Not that he lets himself remember much of those days. He had spent over a decade telling himself the past was dead, that there were no more Jedi, no new clone troopers. Made himself believe that one day he would be working for the Imps and never hear a voice too-similar to his own father’s coming out of a white helmet. Promised himself that he’d be the one to take down any remaining Jedi.

He’d failed. He’d made a Jedi, not destroyed one. Given Leia the weapon he’d taken from some now dead barve who’d kept it as a trophy himself. It had been a foolish moment, a way to bring back the confident woman he'd talked to on Courscant's rooftops. It had been dangerous. He knew far too well what a lightsaber could do, how easily they could find a weakness and exploit it. How simple it was to kill with a weapon that called itself justice. A Jedi with a lightsaber was a judge, jury, and executioner. A princess with a gun was just a girl with a weapon.

He'd told himself, while she'd slept and screamed through her dreams, that the lightsaber would be a token for her. An object to give herself closure. That she'd never have reason to use it, once she got back to the life she was supposed to be living. A princess shouldn't be hiring bounty hunters any more than he should be playing nurse to one. But the events since that dance, that one moment of humanity he'd allowed himself, had led to this in a way that felt almost inevitable. Her powers were no different than those of the brown-clad warriors from years ago. Why should her weapon be any different? 

Looking at her in this moment, with that smug little smile on her face, he finds that, for now, he’s fine with it. It's good to see light in her eyes, better to feel the demand in her kisses.

_For now._

Those words echo as he kisses her once more, forcing himself to take his hands off her warm skin, and step away from her. He can’t ask for more from her than she’s ready to give. She’s had a hell of a day. They both have. Sex would just make things more complicated right now. This was just one odd day. One section of time that when it's over, he can wash his hands clean of all of it. A cold shower will take care of the desire, and a few good fights will take care of the memories. This is fine.

_For now._

“We’ve got a little while before we reach Alderaan.” 

And then what?” she asks, her voice a little hoarse.

“Then, I’ll drop you at that fancy palace you call home.” And he’d get back to his normal life. Put a few hundred light-years between them and see if that was enough to forget her.

“You said you’d stay by my side.”

“Pretty sure those words never crossed my lips, princess.”

He pushes past her, heading up to the cockpit. It’s true he’s promised nothing to her, but he can see the idealism still in her eyes. Thinking he can help her, that he can change. Like if they sleep together, she’ll wake up next to a freedom fighter, not a killer-for-hire. Although, given what he’d seen of the so-called Rebel Alliance, Boba Fett isn’t sure there’s much of a difference between the two

 

* * *

 

Once in the cockpit, checks through his mission notes. He’s kept detailed, coded, logs on all his interactions with her. He reviews them one last time, before selecting the red button in the corner he’s never pressed before.

_Delete._

Just like that, there’s no record in his ship of him ever having worked for the Princess of Alderaan.

If only his head was as easy to clear. As he checks through the ship’s systems, a habit born of too many close calls, too many times he’d only barely escaped, he tells himself that he’ll forget her soon enough, anyway. He’s forgotten others that he’s bedded after all, their names barely registering, their bodies nothing more than a ghost of warmth that whispered past on some long nights.

Not that he’s one to notice what night is, with all the time he spends on the Slave I.

Not that he’s ever been one to hang around, waiting for the ghosts to materialize again.

Most things in his life don’t last long. He likes it that way. Easier to cut ties if the ropes binding him are thin enough one word can snap them. It’s one of many reasons that he prefers bounty work to all others. The only connection he has to someone is the terms of his contract. Once the job is done, the relationship is over.

He should have been done doing jobs for the princess a long time ago. Before this mess ever started.

 In hyperspace, there’s no way to respond to Vader or Organa, so he can set it aside for a little longer. However, the back of his neck prickles with the certainty that things will get ugly soon, so he takes the time to put his armor back on. It’s easier to not think about Leia with the pressure of the gear and the safe darkness of the helmet. It’s easier to pretend he is just the droid she accused him of being.

But he can’t pretend away for very long at all. It’s a skill he burned through as  a child, all his pretend revenges and desperate hopes for a better life. The years he’d spent in the Prison had taught him, slowly but surely, that pretending is just making pain into a debt that will come due, later and harder, than ever before.

He’s not a man who likes debt.

He’s not  a man who thinks he can outsmart Vader easily either, though. It’s not particularly his workmanship that’s kept Fett well-employed Imperial contracts, nor any sense of duty to the government that allegedly rules the galaxy. Perhaps it’s partially that secret Vader thought he knew, the secret he’d figured out—or thought he had, though he certainly wouldn’t bet on it—but it’s mostly his simple ability to believe that Vader is more powerful than any other being he’s ever crossed paths with. Stronger than any of the Jedi, stronger than Ventress. Strong enough that although Fett would never bow in loyalty to anyone, he certainly would never consider disobeying him either.

Until now.

Until Leia had to go and make all of this kriffing complicated.

* * *

 

About an hour later, she climbs up the ladder, her dark hair neatly rebraided, which is a shame. He liked it loose. However, his thoughts on her hair faded when he saw the rest of her ascend the ladder. She’d found the extra jumpsuit he’d left out for her. However, he certainly hadn’t pictured her wearing it… like that. She’d rolled up the sleeves to cuff at her wrist, which was reasonable, and decided to leave most of the top of it completely open, which was not.

Only the last few fasteners were attached, keeping the v-shape of her creamy skin from completely revealing her whole chest. Even still, he saw the underside of her breasts, the dip of her navel…

His mouth went dry. But he stepped closer to her, and deliberately, carefully, leaned down to fasten each of the closures, his hand moving up from her waist. Damn her. Trying to seduce him like this was some liaison on a luxury cruiser, not a mission gone horribly wrong.

 “Not used to having a maid, princess?”

“I…”

Her cheeks went very red. They both knew it was true, that she had plenty of staff in her Senatorial apartment, and back on Alderaan, to fulfill all of her little wishes.

But none of her needs.

Because she hungered for power, for control, for independence, many of the same things he’d spent so long fighting for. It was why he loved this battered ship of his, why he never felt right staying too long on any planet. He needed the freedom space offered, just like Leia had seized the freedom of her wealth.

_Three Minutes to Destination._

“Fett,” she says, as he turns away from her once more, his fists clenched so she can’t see how much he wants to touch her. “We need to talk.”

He ignores her.

“Fett.”

_Two Minutes to Destination._

One of his monitors stars beeping, and he moves to check it. “Buckle up,” he says.  She doesn’t move, and instead looks like she’s about to start lecturing him, so, he adds. “Dropping out of hyperspace in a minute.”

That gets her to sit down in the tiny auxiliary chair he’d added into the cockpit while she’d slept. Because some stupid, irrational part of him knew this was how it was going to be. That he would take her back to her family, but only on her terms. He finishes the process of maneuvering the ship back toward reality, wishing he could move himself back the same way. That he could use hyperspace coordinates to jump away from the feelings racing just under his skin. Instead, his gloved hands tighten on the edge of the mapping tool, and his breathing is forced, even to his own ears.  The lights around them lengthen, spin, and then, there’s the gut-dropping feeling of falling back into the speed of reality.

Alderaan is an easy planet to drop in to. No asteroid belt, no rings to maneuver, not even any protection from an armada. They’ve only got seconds until its green-blue orb will appear in the view screen, minutes until descent, an hour until it’s all over.

He glances over at Leia, barely even turning the helmet toward her. She offers him a smile that holds a thousand credit’s worth of secrets. She can’t see it, but he catches himself smiling back.  One smile. That’s all he’ll allow himself. Before she goes home. Before he vanishes.

Then, a massive asteroid slams into the side of the ship and eveything goes to hell.


	7. Legacy

Alderaan is gone.

That’s the only answer. He doesn’t bother to check his coordinates, has never mapped a destination wrong, not even when he was a child. The planet has been wiped off the map, reduced to rubble. He moves fast, spinning the ship so the thrusting engines slow, allowing him to land on the largest of the nearby asteroids. An asteroid that is both grave and skeleton of a planet. By the time he’s enabled a magnetic cling to the surface and turned to look at her, she’s frozen into ice.

“I need the holonet. I need to see communications,” she begins crisply, her voice the way it sounds when she addresses Darth Vader. When she’s terrified and hiding it. “Now, Fett.”

The change to his last name does not go unnoticed. He passes her the datapad, with one hand. The other is already tracking across his keys, ensuring that Slave I’s signal will pick up as nothing more than an errant TIE-Fighter, a trick he’d used plenty of times before.  Then, he starts programming a new hyperspace jump.

Leia notices it before him, for that reason. “Fett.”

He lifts his helmet. There, ahead of them looms… “An artificial moon?”

She shakes her head. “That’s no moon. That’s a weapon.”

It’s the only thing he needs to hear before he slams the ship thrusters on. It pivots as it takes off, back into the freedom of space, carefully weaving around the asteroids and the…

“Fett!” she cries.

He never thought he could get sick of his own last name. “I see ‘em.” Three TIEs buzz past in formation.

“They didn’t shoot.”

“And they won’t.”

Because he works for them, far more often than she realizes. Because it’s easier for her to think of his loyalty as something he flips a coin for, something that nets out at half good and half bad, when really, her tiny jobs are rain drops compared to the sea of work he’s done for the Imps.

“Did you send your comms, Princess?” the words come from some well-trained part of him that still isn’t thinking. The part of him that cares for her. The part of him that feels pain and fear and need, that part has drowned in emotions he doesn’t know how to process. Because an entire planet is gone. A peaceful, simple planet, one that even he has to admit was good, if one wants to believe in morals. He’s no strange to death, not afraid of the carnage of war. But genocide at the planetary level is something new, something difficult to process, even for his battered neurons.

“y-yes.” She stutters. “and the news is downloading.”

“Good.” He activates the hyperdrive. She lets out one small shriek of fear as the stars turn to lines in the viewport windo, and the ship leaves the plane of reality, the one holding the burnt rubble of a whole civilization, behind.

He hears the recording, some cold general’s voice. “And so, let this be a lesson—”

Leia’s scream is sharply muffled. Even in the depth of space, on a ship where only he could witness, she forces that grief away, swallows the scream. He hears only a little more, confirming what they both already knew. Alderaan is gone.

When he looks back to her, all her features have been frozen back to a placid mask, as expressionless as his own T-shaped visor.

He knows that feeling all too well. All his life has been spent in the aftermath of loss. Never grief, no. There was no time for grief, not in his profession. In two decades, he’d given himself, what, those five seconds to grieve, there on the dusty ground of a damned planet, holding an empty helmet in his hands.

Leia seems on track for even less time than that.  Fett makes a decision then. “Leia.” He says her name. She doesn’t turn. “Leia. Come here.” It’s a command, nothing like anything he’s ever said to her before. But the ship is moving through hyperspace, and can’t be tracked. They’re safe. She should be allowed more time than the forgotten son of a bounty hunter had gotten, to mourn a whole damn planet.

“Leia.”

Finally, she moves toward him, her stagger giving away just how much her facial expression was a lie She collapses against him, her cheek pressed against his cold armor. His gloved fingers are clumsy as they try to stroke her hair. He doesn’t know how to do this, how to be tender. He can handle intimacy when it’s coupled with passion. He doesn’t know how to give comfort. He’s not sure he can. After all, she’s embracing more weapons than man.

Now he curses that he changed into his armor, that he offers no human warmth to her in this moment. Her tears fall against durasteel plates that have had countless blood splatters washed off over the years. Her hands grip the bit of fabric on his arms, between flamethrower and armor. He's nothing she needs right now. He cannot be gentle, or soft, or understanding. All he can offer is his presence. But she doesn't pull away.  Her shoulders tremble, in what must be sobs. He keeps standing there, a silent sentinel to her grief.

 

* * *

 

Eventually, though he’s not really sure how it happened, she let him carry her back to his small bed. “Don’t… don’t go.” She whispers as he lays her down. “I saw the coordinates, I know we have a long jump ahead.”

She’s right. He planned to get as far from that planet-destroyer as he could. “I don’t want to be—”

She chokes on the word. She doesn’t need to say. It’s one he knows well, perhaps better than any other. _Alone._

They’re both alone now, Leia in her grief, and him in all his broken plans. Bail Organa is dead. There’s no one to return Leia to, no safe place he can drop her off. And he’d be damned if he did all this work to save her just to hand her over to Vader. He's been alone for so long. He should be able to handle this better than he is.

“We shouldn’t,” he begins and there’s a universe of things that sentence includes. _Do this. Be here. Risk any more between us. Kiss. Talk_.  But he wants all of those things. Wants them in that desperate way he's only ever seen in other people, the ones who hire him to track down lovers, find family members stolen away. Wants them in a way that reminds him of just how dangerous wanting is.

“Just hold me.” She says.

It’s such a small thing.

It’s such a giant thing, one sure to knock him even further off course. He might be able to pilot through an artificial asteroid storm, but he can’t avoid this hazard. No, instead, he strips out of his armor, and steps out of the flight suit, leaving himself in just a grey tee and tight black shorts that leave very little to an imagination.

He feels guilty for that thought immediately, which is a new emotion for him to deal with. He reminds himself this isn’t for sex. This is what she needs to heal. Her planet is gone. He can’t begin to imagine how that feels, but he knows what it’s like to lose everything that has defined your universe up until now. So, he slides in next to her. The sheets are cool, but she’s colder, shivering as she moves into his arms. Moving only based on instinct, he kisses her forehead, because it’s all he can reach without much effort.

Her hands grip the fabric of his shirt tighter. It’s going to be a long rest here, and he doubts either of them will feel better when they wake. He doesn’t apologize. It’s not his fault the planet’s gone. So, she’s the first to speak. “Vader is looking for me.” He makes a noise that she takes as an affirmative, and adds, “are you going to turn me into him?”

The words freeze him, because of their double meaning. No. He has no bounty on her, beyond the one from Organa. He won’t turn her in, the wording of a convict being dropped off for their punishment. But turn into… that’s another set of words. Will his actions shape Leia into something that resembles Vader? That resembles her father, the way Fett ended up just like his own? Because identity is a hell of a lot more than just genetics. Leia’s blood might have whatever important particles Vader wanted, but it’s her temper, her rage, that he thinks makes her more like the Sith Lord than anything else.

It’s not Boba’s cloned genes that kept him a bounty hunter without a home. There’s plenty of former troopers, all settled throughout the galaxy. No. It’s the other things he inherited from his father. Distrust. Unease. A sense that nothing good can ever last.

“I didn’t take Vader’s bounty on you.” He finally says.

She kisses him then, warm and willing, and they press together. His knee slides between hers  as they roll on the tiny bed, seeking pleasure that came more easily than conversation. Her kisses are deeper now, less urgent, more pleading. And when his hand cups her breast, she begs. “Please. Please don’t stop.”

Because he’s offering a mind-numbing drug to her. Not spice, no, but something just as deadly. If he doesn’t stop, she won’t have to think. He’s not sure if he likes that, if he wants to be her bounty hunter and her drug dealer. “Leia…” he starts. Some stupid part of him wonders if he’s only saying that so he can hear his first name, like she had said it.

“You’re right,” she mumbles, tucking herself back against him. “We shouldn’t.” She’s still shivering, though, and it seems like there’s nothing he can do to get her warm. He’s already turned the ship thermostat to its highest temperature, which is, admittedly, frosty. His hand rubs her back, fingertips pressing along the muscles under her shoulderblade, and traveling down her arm. She’s got a fighter’s form, underneath all those outfits. He wonders how good of a shot she really is. He’s still wondering that, when she asks, “Have you killed Jedi?”

“Yes.”

He could have never expected her next question, “will you teach me?”

He kisses her as an answer. The universe exists between them, as they touch, each kiss lulling them toward sleep, fooling them into thinking they can cross the distance between as easily as they can move to touch each other.

The universe is cold, and harsh, and for Leia, so much darker a place than it had been yesterday.  He tries to be warm, and attempts gentleness just for her, because he knows there is nothing he can do to chase away the darkness. He lives in the shadows himself, and she had always been the light that tempted him upward.

Now, he can’t shake the feeling that they’re both falling.

 

* * *

 

In the morning, she’s all business. She’s dressed and has rebraided her hair into a simple, long rope before he even blinks awake. The data pad is in her hand, and there’s a mug of insta-caf next to her.

Floating, next to her. 

She doesn’t seem to notice, that her will simply levitated the coffee to an easy to reach spot for her. She doesn’t notice either, how his gaze travels over her, down to the marks on her shoulder his hungry mouth had left. Gentleness was a thing that he was learning, yes, but turned out to be a thing she only craved in small doses.  He’s drowsy enough to imagine pulling her back to bed, and finishing the work they’d only started before they’d fallen asleep. He imagines how that hair would look, freed from its braid, spilled out beneath her while he moves above her and…

He gets up, wordlessly heading to the fresher for a very cold shower. It only helps remove the physical symptoms of his desire. All his hunger still coils within him, flowing through him with every beat of his heart. He almost hopes when he exits that she'll be levitating everything in the room, that her Force powers will spike, killing his desire for her. 

But even seeing her with a lightsaber in hand has done nothing to stop his wanting. Her abilities terrify him, but her personality draws him in. Her body has always been the bait for the sharp trap of her mind. A lithe, delicate female form is easy enough for any man with a few credits or a not-ugly face to find in any of the cantinas he ends up frequenting. But her mind? That sharp temper? The cunning wit and incredible courage? That's damn rare, and alll the more appealing than any aspect of her body.

She says to him, when he exits a few minutes later, “I need to get to Tatooine.”

“Absolutely not.” He towels his hair. It’s longer than he likes it, brushing over his ears the way it had when he was young. Too much right now is reminding him of when he was young.

“But.” Leia starts to protest, and the mug crashes to the floor. She can’t maintain a focus she doesn’t know she has, and be angry. That much is clear.  
He tosses the towel to her, so she can mop up the bit of spilled caf. The mug didn’t break. He’s not one to put breakables in his private quarters. At least, he hadn’t been, until he’d met her. Because she’s more breakable now than one of those damn crystal flowers from the night that had changed everything. When he’d started revamping the Slave I, he’d immediately ripped out all the extra protections Jango had layered in the bunk space. The guarding system, the padding on the walls in case of impact, the climate control (hence the current freezing temperature.) It had all been a waste of resources in Boba’s eyes. Wearing armor inside the ship made all that unnecessary.  It wasn’t until now that Boba realized none of those small creature comforts, nor the extra safety precautions had ever been designed for a man in armor. They’d been for the small boy who tagged along on some missions, who needed a warm, safe place to sleep, without ever really knowing it.

 “No. That place is crawling with imperials.”

“There’s an old friend of… of my father’s there. General Kenobi.”

“No.” his voice turns colder. He remembers brown robes, sizing up the first Jedi he’d seen in real life, calling for his father. No. If Kenobi was alive, there was no way in hell they were going looking for him. On the other hand, once Leia was safe… well, he might just have some unfinished business with the Jedi bastard. Tatooine isn't that far away... and it's been a long time since he's been able to give into any thoughts of vengeance. 

“I will NOT be left out of plans.” Color rises high on Leia’s cheek, and she points at him with one stern finger.

He grabs the hand, brings it to his mouth, but instead of biting it, like she’d done to him, he presses it against his lips, reminding her of exactly what her own mouth had done hours before. It doesn’t calm her, but he hadn’t been aiming for calm. Just a distraction for both of them from the name Kenobi.

“Listen here, princess. I can protect you. That’s my job, and I’m damn good at it. But I’m not going to drag you into that hellhole on some fool’s errand. I’m taking you to my safehouse.”

“Where’s that?”

“Mandalore.”

Leia let out a short bark of laughter. The Outer Rim might not be the safest, after all, but it would be outside of the most of the Empire’s reach. Vader himself couldn’t set foot on Mandalore without turning every Journeyman Protector against him, and he knew it. Anyone Vader could send, well, Fett knew he could handle it. After all, he was usually the one the Empire turned to on missions like that, so any barve Vader could summon, would be a second-rate one compared to Boba.

Plus, Mandalore was his best chance at getting someone to put those force powers of hers under control.

“I’m making breakfast.”

“You’re what?” her jaw drops, which does nothing to clear those pleasant memories from last night away. For such a sarcastic little mouth, it’s an awfully generous one too. He bends down and kisses her.

“I can be domestic.”

She laughs again. He never knew laughter could feel as good, as hard-earned as a stack of credits. But hers in that moment does. It’s a sign he succeeded. She didn’t freeze over. He wouldn’t let her. He’s the cold one on this ship, more machine than man when it comes to emotions. This… this whatever they have only works if Leia was feeling things. She’s the compass he trusts to navigate the intimacy they’ve stumbled into, since his own navigational system is all shot to hell.

* * *

 

As she watches, he efficiently unpacks a mini kitchenette from a drawer in his room, a single heating coil, a pan, a collapsible bowl. It’s not a unit he uses much, but it’s still functional. He moves through checking a few ration cans for something that can be heated.

“Do you cook all your meals like this?” Leia perches on the edge of the bed, watching him.

His lips quirk in an almost smile. “No.”

“You’re right. I guess that would be silly, wouldn’t it? I’m sure you’d get bored of ration cans and such limited cooking… There’s probably plenty of restaurants on your missions. Have you ever eaten at Fia’sa’ta’s Soups in Coruscant? It’s…”

She’s rambling now, which he oddly enough doesn’t mind. Her voice is not unpleasant to listen to.  It’s better than the stony silence she had when they’d found Alderaan’s ruins.

“I eat ration bars every day.” He comments dryly. His routine, now going on day number four of being completely interrupted by her. It will be better, once they get to Mandalore.  He'll be able to go back to all the small things that make him who he is, and Leia will have other people around. People much better equipped to deal with emotions and grief and... the damned Force. “Haven't been there. Soup isn’t exactly helmet-friendly. Unless they offer straws.”

“Is that… Boba! That was a joke.”

It… fierfek, it feels good to hear his name from her. It feels too good. It’s dangerous, to feel so much for her. He tells himself it’s just because there’s only two of them, cooped up on this ship. It will be easier to forget her, once he knows she’s safe on Mandalore.

He turns, and passes her the bowl of noodles and sauce, still steaming hot from the stove. If she’s surprised by the food, he’s more surprised by the way her hand goes to the back of his neck, holding him there for a kiss.

He pulls away, but sits in the chair across from her, watching her spin the noodles into a neat little nest on the all purpose utensil. Everything he has is all-purpose. Designed to be compact, useful, easily replaced.

Everything but her.

She makes an appreciative little moan of delight after the first mouthful. “Good.” He nods. “My dad used to make that. The spices warm you up.” Jango had cooked rarely, but always when Boba was tired, or scared, or afraid. Those emotions he had once been allowed to feel, a long time ago. “He said warm food is the working man’s cure-all.”

It’s been so long since he’d shared anything Jango has ever said with someone. The words feel heavy on his tongue. And it’s a stupid thing to say to someone like Leia. Someone who grew up with court doctors and state-of-the-art medical centers. Both of which are gone, now.

“Was he a bounty hunter too?” Leia takes another bite. There’s a little sauce on the edge of her mouth.

She doesn’t question that he had a father. Doesn’t hesitate to name his career. “Yeah. One of many things.”

“So he must have worked prior to the Clone Wars, then.”

More like had been the damn lynchpin of the Clone Wars, or at least his DNA had, but sure.  He nodded. She added, “Is that how you were able to locate those… those two people?”

Her parents. He nods again. “The Empire recently gained access to a pool of data from a Naboo-based geneticist.” The words betray none of the reality, of his wrist snapping the doctor’s fragile arm, dragging him away from his precious research. None of the coldness Fett felt as he stood before Vader, as the man choked the life away from the Doctor. No. He’d felt nothing at all. It had been a job, and he’d completed it.

Little did he know how much one mission would change everything.

“Your DNA matched a former queen.  Padmé Amidala Naberrie.” A long name for the woman he remembered fighting that Nexu. He’d thought she was beautiful then, when he had been just a boy. She’d seemed both ethereal and determined in a way he didn’t know a woman could be. He hadn’t exactly gotten to meet a wide variety of human women when he’d been on Kamino.  But, as a man, he finds her daughter, with all her sharp edges and bright eyes, much more appealing. “it’s believed she had a… liaison with the Jedi sworn to protect her.” He doesn’t offer that one’s name, nor the name he’s pretty sure the man uses now.

“How did you get access to those DNA records?” Leia sets the bowl down. “And why,” as she thinks enough to ask the question, her expression changes. Hardens. “Why. Why were you… what the hell were you doing with MY DNA, FETT?”

She’s lept to her feet, and within a second, that lightsaber is lit, buzzing in her hand. The blue light glows harshly in the simple room. Her whole body is trembling, telling him this is a fast rage, one that would be easy to overpower her while she burns with it. It’s when Leia goes cold that she’s the most dangerous.

Not that a furious woman with a lightsaber is exactly safe, either.

“It was a job.” He doesn’t stand. Let her look down on him if she must. “It was a job, and I didn’t _fucking_  honor that contract, Leia. I _broke_ it. I _lied.”_ Things he promised himself, his father’s memory he would never do. Emotions he swore he’d never feel, all simmered under his surface. He was supposed to be better than this. Supposed to be incapable of caring for anyone but himself.

He was supposed to not fall victim to the same emotions that had doomed his father. Because if Jango hadn’t cared so much, if Jango had… A thousand scenarios played through his mind, as always. If Jango hadn’t taken him to Genosis, he wouldn’t have distracted him when the Jedi appeared. If Boba hadn’t been standing there, Jango could have gotten the jump on Windu.

It was a Jedi’s blade that had killed his father, but it was his compassion for his son, his useless, weak son, that had damned him. Boba had started to believe that, years ago, and clung to it as proof of his own failings. Now, he had failed again. Failed to complete a job, failed, because he’d chosen to protect someone instead of do the work he was hired to do.

Her breathing shallows out, each breath only a moment long. “You… you lied to who? Who was looking for a DNA match for me? And why?”

“Is this an interrogation or a conversation?” he retorts, folding his arms. He wonders if she knows that Vader does the same thing, his emotions spiking as suddenly as a meteorite can fall from the sky.  He’s sure she must, she’s had dealings with the man before. But just like even Boba pretends there’s no face behind the stormtrooper helmets, he’s sure Leia has never considered the human underneath the fearsome black helmet.

Even if she’d fallen for Fett when he was in just as infamous of a helmet. Even if she’d believed in his humanity with no proof, no evidence of anything one might call humane, or good. Would she do the same for Vader, when she found out? Find a way to see humanity in a cold monster?

He didn’t think so. Not after the destruction of Alderaan. And that inability to see humanity in the person whose blood flowed in her veins, might very well damn her to become just as monstrous.

She flicks the lightsaber off.  “Answers, Fett.”

The name is as good as a blow from the saber. He flinches, just a little. “Vader. He got a sense you might have that fierfekking Force… aura or whatever about you. He’s been trying to figure you out for over a year.”

Almost as long as Boba himself had been trying to do the same.

Leia sits back down heavily, all her limbs going limp. “Vader. Vader wants to know who my parents are.” She tries out the phrase, tasting it the way she tasted the food, and then, shakes her head. Sometimes it seems like she has silent conversations with her own convictions. “No. He wasn’t looking for both sides, was he. Just my mother. Because he… he….”

_Are you going to turn me into him?_

“He is your father, yes.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and for all your lovely comments. Stay tuned, because I have plans to have a spin-off fic with the uh... "unedited" version of their little bedtime snuggle fest.


	8. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia and Boba talk, fight, and reach their target destination.

Darth Vader is her father.

The words resonate inside her for one brutal moment, and then, the ice surrounds her, cloaks her in coldness again. Really, the ice had been there for a day or so now, she only had to let it cover her once more.

Her planet is gone.

Her family, her home, destroyed.

And her father is a monster.

No. Not her father. That word is hers to choose. Perhaps the person who had fathered her was Darth Vader, but she’d never refer to that man as her father. No. Her father was Bail Organa, was a good man, was a kind and noble man… and a dead man. But he was a man who had taught her to wear a brave face, even in the worst of times. So that was just what she’d do.

She sets her expression like a mask, her hand going back to feel the cold metal of the lightsaber at her waist.

“C’mon,” she says to Boba. “Let’s practice.”

“What?” Confused lines crinkle his forehead. It’s unusual to see surprise on his face, or at least, unusual for the small amount of time she’d gotten to see his face. 

“You said you’d teach me to fight. No time like the present.”

“Leia,” his tone is a warning one, which would have sounded absolutely menacing with his helmet on. Or, if she was been capable of being menaced. 

She’s not. Right now, she can’t feel anything.  She could fake excitement, fake a smile quite well, she’d been doing that for years, but she has no other emotions to offer him.

“Fine. Then we practice here.” She ignites the lightsaber.  The blue light blazes up, bright enough for her to see his eyes narrow, showing his dislike of Jedi. The same disgust that had been on his face moments ago… when she’d threatened him.

Stars. She’d threatened Boba Fett, with an ancient weapon she had no idea how to use (although she was pretty sure the answer to that question was “swing the glowy part at his head”) and then, had made him lose control. 

Maybe she really did have the Force, because there was no other way she could have so rattled the cold bounty hunter. The way his voice had cracked when he’d explained he broke his contract had sent shivers down her spine. It had taken all of her diplomatic training to get the rest of the truth from him, when all she’d wanted to do was kiss him, taste that sincerity on his lips, know him as a human man, a failable man, and not the myth she’d feared he was.

But now, that moment had passed, and she’s still holding the illuminated lightsaber. It hums comfortably in her hand.

“Turn that thing off,” he stands to face her. “Now.”

She would ordinarily rebel at the command, but this time, she listens, flipping the switch that already feels like an extension of her body. Her hand takes it one step further, and she lets the saber handle slip out of her grasp. It hits the floor with a loud clatter.

The weapon rolls away from them.

“Good.”  He checks his holopad, presumably for the time remaining on their trip. “You won’t kill him with that. Not if you go in swinging it.”

“Why not?”

“Because Vader has trained for longer than you’ve been alive to wield a lightsaber. He’d slice you in half in a second.”

“But the Force-“

“Princess, let’s get one thing clear.” He holds out a warning finger. When he calls her princess, she knows he’s frustrated. She doesn’t quite care. “If I’m going to teach you to fight, we’re not going to mention that bantha shit, understand.”

The giant crowd of voices that had so recently occupied her head might disagree with his assessment of the Force, but Leia doesn’t feel much like considering the feelings of ghosts. “Fine.”

“Good. We’ll practice in the holding pens.”

* * *

 

The holding pen area is much larger than his tiny room, and somehow, even colder. It feels like there might be frost on the metal walls, if it was even a degree lower. She wonders if Boba has ever felt warm in his whole life. That brings to mind the press of his body against hers last night, the way he held her close as if only she could warm him, and a very hot blush rises to her cheeks.

He doesn’t seem to notice. He’s shifted into the posture of a fighter, something she hadn’t realized he’d dropped around her in the bedroom. Now every movement he makes is calculated. He stands next to her, dropping one foot a little behind him, and pulls his hands up into fists. “Square your feet.”

She doesn’t. She’s so busy thinking of that night that it takes her more than a few tries to get into a fighting stance. Boba grows more than a little exasperated, which only makes her more annoyed. 

The two snap at each other, until finally, he growls, “Fierfek, just hit me. You won’t do much damage.”

_ People will underestimate you, Princess, for your whole life. _ For once, the voice isn’t that of some ghostly council, nor from her warring head and heart. No. It’s the voice of a friend. A welcome memory of home, of less-confusing times. It came from the summer that Bail Organa had commanded then-Lieutenant Cassian Andor to teach Leia to fight. Cassian hadn’t been much older than her, and was even shorter, more slight, than the vulpine man he’d grown to be. Which made him the perfect tutor for Leia.

He didn’t teach her to throw punches. In fact, he’d pointed out she’d break her wrist if she tried.

No, he’d taught her kicks, and bites, and chokeholds. Anything for the element of surprise. Of course, when Bail would walk by, the two would fall into the practiced flow of an ancient form of hand-to-hand-combat, all smooth poses and balanced body weights. Neither the spy nor the princess thought it was a good idea to reveal she’d learned to fight dirty.

 

Now, on the Slave I, all that training rushed back into her body.  Her frame drops low, her hand coming out and tighten to a fist. A flash of annoyance crosses Boba’s face, that she’d try such an easy maneuver. But even one of the galaxy’s best bounty hunters hadn’t expected the princess to fight like a street-rat from Fest.

While he focuses on blocking the too-weak punch, her knee swings up and into his stomach, hard. The other arm swings down, smashing her elbow into the back of his neck.

Boba’s breath lets out in a sudden cough.

Leia yeps, and steps back, her eyes going wide. She’d never actually hit someone before, not that hard. Cassian had always had her stop just before the moment of impact. She’d never done that to a person. Shot at them, yes. Usd the Force on (apparently), yes. But physical combat is new.

As new as the physical intimacy she and Boba had shared last night.

To her, the two are so different, that she’s utterly shocked when he looks up at her with the same delighted, feral, hunger in his eyes. The same fire that had burned in his gaze when he’d undressed her. “Boba…” she whispers.

Wordlessly, he pounces. She might have landed a hit on him, but he is the trained fighter, and moves faster than she ever could. He pushes her back, against the cold wall of his ship. But instead of a punch, it’s a kiss that makes contact between them. He kisses her lips, her neck, a sudden desperation revealing itself. Her hands now come up, not to strike, but to wrap around his strong shoulders, to hold her steady as his kiss steals her breath.

“You fight dirty,” he says, and it’s with such a purr that Leia feels the heat of ten-thousand suns ignite somewhere lower than her hips. His teeth nip her collarbone, and her back arches.

“Bo…Boba,” she whispers. Should they be doing this? In the middle of fighting lessons? Right after she’d learned…

Learned exactly what she wanted to forget.

And kissing Boba Fett seems a very pleasurable way to forget, indeed.

She fell asleep with her head pillowed on his thigh, and wakes to him checking the sight of one of his many weapons. Only Boba would do weapon-cleaning while being used as a pillow. “I apologize,” she says, sitting up a little.

One eyebrow quirks in a silent reply.

She blushes. “we didn’t…”

The eyebrow remains lifted.

“I assume you’d want more than…”

Her blush has choked out all her words, so when he finally speaks, she sighs with relief. “We did enough, I think, for us both to be content.” He sets the pistol down.. “You good?”

She’d felt better than good in his arms. Incredible, with the way he’d let her give him pleasure with her hands and mouth. Then, she’d felt utterly senseless with joy when he’d returned the favor. But, keeping things simple, she replied. “Yeah. I’m good.”

“Good.”:

Silence falls between them again. It’s not a comfortable one. She wonders if things will keep being awkward, now that this intimacy exists, filling in moments that otherwise might have been spent talking,

He clears his throat. “You can fight. Can you shoot?”

She snorts with derision, a habit her mother hated. A habit she’d never again be able to annoy Breha with again. Her mother is dead. As dead as that woman with the sad smile she used to dream about. When she does speak, her voice is quiet, composed, all the things Breha tried to impart. “I prefer pistols.”

Boba just nods at that commentary. Nothing else is said.

She returns to the small bedroom, and takes a nap on the bed, leaving him to his guns, and her to her nightmares.

* * *

 

_ In her nightmare, she’s back in the council room, and all the voices are yelling. They shout that she’s too old, too angry, too full of hate. _

_ One voice, that old, creaky one, wheezes, “forgive him, she must.” _

_ “Forgive who?” Leia demands, but no one listens to her. _

_ They argue and argue and argue. Then, there's a soft pressure on her shoulder, a warm voice in her ear. It’s that woman. The one who had defended Leia earlier. Who had seemed to hold Boba Fett in some regard, rather than the hatred the other voices had for her. _

_ “You draw close to where I last lay,” the voice whispers. “When you land, know that if you call for me, I will try to aid you however I can.” _

_ “I…” Leia spins, searching the empty darkness for the figure. “I don’t know you. You’re not my mother, are you?” _

_ The voice is sad and soft. “No, young princess. I am not. But I am someone’s mother. Someone who had to leave my child in the hands of another, the same as your mother had to, when the stars called her home. That is the connection we share, you and I, among many other things.” _

_ “So, you died.” _

_ “I came back to the Force, as all things must.” _

_ “But I can call on you… when we reach Mandalore?” Leia’s voice turns it into a question without meaning to.  She hates the confusion of the dreams, dreads how uncertain and unmoored they leave her. She wants answers, and all she gets is more questions. “Please. Tell me your name.” _

_ “Etain,” the woman whispers. _

* * *

 

The simple name is still echoing  in Leia’s mind when she wakes to see Boba in the doorway. His armor is on.So is his helmet. She finds she doesn’t miss his face. She fell in love with the man inside the armor, not the face of the man. But she does miss the little insights into his emotions that his expressions had revealed.

“We’ve got an hour til landing.” He says, “Need anything?”

Tiredly, she rakes her hand through her nest of a hairstyle. “A comb?” She’s doubtful he has one, given his short hairstyle.

But he nods, curtly, and leaves.

He returns just as she’s finished dressing into the extra flightsuit again. He holds out one hand to offer a piece of plastech. The hard material is black, and looks like it might have once been part of a bump stock of a rifle. Now, though, it has five narrow teeth shaped into it. Carved by what must have been a sharp vibroblade, and then sanded down into smooth.

A comb. He made her a comb.

It’s the most incredible sweet thing she’s ever seen, as well as being the galaxy’s ugliest comb.

But it struck her suddenly, just how few creature comforts he has, if he needs to turn part of a blaster into a simple hair care tool. “Thank you,” she pauses, considering her word choice. Talking to him sometimes requires all of her diplomacy skills. “Do you have family on Mandalore?”

“I have no family.”

“Friends?”

His bitter laugh is her only reply. The sound makes the comb feel heavier in her hands, as she realizes she carries all the weight of affection for Boba in the whole universe. That perhaps, if not for her, no one would ever care if the man lived or died.

No. That’s not true. She knows his reputation. It’s why she hired him, after all. Plenty of people want him dead.

But she might just be the only person who wants him to live.

* * *

 

When they land on the planet, and before they disembark, he passes over one more present. Two gleaming pistols, both tucked into a leather belt she can tell was hastily made smaller for her narrow frame.“Custom made,” he comments as she studies the lightweight handle. “Good for brief attacks. Which is,” he wraps the belt around her hips, perhaps on purpose letting his fingertips brush over her backside. “All you better be in.”

She bites her lips, because she knows the battle to reach Vader will be anything but brief. But the fear passes, melting into outright affection at the gift. The pistols must mean a great deal to him, because they look brand-new, and she’s seen nothing new in his whole ship.

So, she leans up on her tiptoes, and kisses the cool metal side of his helmet. “Thank you.”

He freezes. “Do you  _ know _ where this thing’s been?”

“Presumably every place you’ve been, unless you’re prone to tossing it down garbage chutes.” Leia shrugs. The helmet is part of him. It's as simple as that.

There’s another pause, and she’s kriffing sure that he’s smiling under that battered helmet. Sure of it, and annoyed she can’t see it.

“Fine.” He mutters. “Let’s get going.”

The two of them leave behind the ship. She shivers, having not expected Mandalore to be so cold.  Then again, she didn't know that much about the Mandalore sector at all. The Outer Rim was Captain Andor's territory. Not hers. 

_ No place for diplomatic maneuvers out there, Leia. _  Her father had said, when she'd begged to follow the captain out on one of his recruiting missions, a few years ago.  _We'll keep you close to the Core. That's where your skills will do the most good. Core worlds will be won with words. The Outer Rim will come to us with a fight._

She'd been so furious then. Annoyed he saw her as fragile. Angry she couldn't be considered a fighter. Just a princess. That was the night she'd first started plotting how to hire a bounty hunter. Little did she know then, how that choice would lead her right into the heart of the Outer Rim, onto the planet most known for its love of the fight.

Little had she known how fragile her father's life was. 

How fragile all life was.

She swallows back her tears, and charges ahead, matching pace with Boba as they cut through the scrubby treeline. "What's the plan?"

"I've got a meeting with a man named Fenn Shysa," Boba answers, his voice cold, registering at about a 9/10 on the annoyed scale, if Leia had to judge. "There's someone here I want to find. Someone who can help you."

"But where  _is_ here?" Leia replies. She knew Mandalore had cities, a bustling capital, civilization. So why are they in the wilderness?  

"Here?" Boba nods, curtly. "We're a mile from Kyrimorut."

The word means nothing to her. But suddenly, there's a sigh inside Leia's head. It's not hers. Neither is the soft, sweet voice that whispers only one word to her. It's the voice of the Jedi, and all the longing in the word makes Leia shiver.

" _Home."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy! Comments always welcome.  
> As promised, the smutty bits can be found under my second handle, "MOVETHEUNIVERSE" on this site!


	9. Mand'alor

 

Mandalore turned out to be a basic, friendly to humanoids planet. One with average gravity and a breathable atmosphere. Nothing she’s seen so far strikes Leia as unusual, except for a general sense of… austerity? Bitterness? She wasn’t quite sure how else to describe the landscape. It certainly was nothing like… home.  Like beautiful Alderaan. Like the Alderaan that was gone forever now.

Here, Boba moves like he had on Coruscant, all coiled strength, ready to fight at a moment’s notice. He hacks through rows of scrubby underbrush with a vibroblade, pulled out from one of his many pockets. When they reach a thicker section of scrubby trees, Leia ignites the lightsaber.   
“Don’t,” he commands. There’s no other word for his tone.

She doesn’t listen. Instead, she swipes forward, letting the glowing blue blade cut through the tree. It’s amazing how easily it cuts, how she feels nothing more than a slight bit of pressure on the blade. Cutting through a person would be just as easy.

Not just any person.

She lets herself imagine the blade slicing through Vader’s imposing dark form, leaving him in two clear pieces.

_ And suddenly, sees a man, screaming in the flames of some far off planet. A man without arms, without hope. Full of anger. _

There’s a sudden tug on her wrist. Leia snaps back to the present moment. Away from whatever that was. 

To find Boba’s whipcord wrapped around her arm. “What the…  _ kriffing hells,  _ Boba! Let me go!” It’s a drastic change from how he’s always treated her. Now she feels like… like the merchandise he keeps in a storage pen. Just a bounty. 

He presses a button to release the whipcord the moment she drops the lightsaber. “This will get you  _ killed _ , here, Leia.” He picks up the saber and gestures at it emphatically. “Do you have any idea how much you mean to--”

“To who? You?” She snorts. “Don’t believe it for a minute.” She had, of course, believed it. Thought he’d cared, that she mattered to him. And then, for his first reaction to be that, to stop her not with a word or a gentle touch, but a tool. Like she was a prisoner. 

No. She didn’t matter to Boba Fett at all. There was the soft huff of his voice, but he said nothing. Didn’t even argue with her assessment. 

She scoops up the lightsaber and tucks it back in her belt. Glares once more in his direction before plowing ahead. “What’s the deal with Fenn, anyway?” she asks.

“He’s the Mand’alor.”

She’s not that familiar with the term, though she feels she should be.  The Mandalorian wars, those she’d heard of, but ages ago. Before she’d understood why history would matter before. Before the weight of responsibility pressed against her as a vice. Why had she ignored the Outer Rim so thoroughly in her studies? 

The answer, like so many others she’s learned recently, is right under the surface, in clear, shameful view.

Because the Core worlds held all the money, in the eyes of so many she had known. It was better for people like Captain Andor to risk their lives in the dangerous wilds. The Outer Rim was no place for a princess.

But is she still a princess, if she has no planet? “So the Mand’alor is the ruler?” She tries hard to capture the cadence of a foreign word.

“As much as you can rule a nation of warlords.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“Aren’t all Mandalorians?” he replies, without any trace of humor.

Her hand rests on the butt of one of the silver blasters he’d given her. She’d thought they’d meant he trusted her. That they were equals. But she can’t shake the feeling of the cord around her arm, trapping her. “Do these things even work?” she asks, bitterness creeping into her tone. She hadn’t checked. Just trusted him.

That’s what got her into this whole mess. 

But if she hadn’t gone with him… Would her bones be atomized along with all the others in that asteroid field? She shivers.

“Cold?” Boba asks, sounding confused, even to her. It is quite humid here, in the middle of the underbrush. The shadows offer little coolness, and the air has a tang of some pollen that is bitter on her tongue. She’s not used to forest like this, all scrubby bits of plant, green stuffs too stubborn to die

She shakes her head.

They’ve stopped walking. He nods at her. “Shoot one of those.”   
“So I’m not allowed to use my lightsaber, but I can shoot a tree?”

He steps behind her, giving her ample room to aim. “It’s Mandalore. Everything gets shot here, some day or another.”

Leia hefts a blaster. It’s incredibly well-weighted, as fine as any she’d held. The metal is cool, but well-polished. Whoever Boba had gotten the blasters from had kept them in far better cosmetic condition than it seems he keeps his. She aims down the sight. “Where’d these come from, anyway?” she asks as she pulls the trigger. The recoil is almost imperceptible, and the blaster bolt is fast, smooth, easy. It smashes through the tree she’d aimed for, leaving a perfect hole the size of a fist.

The pistols not only work, they are kriffing dangerous.

He waits for her to put it back in a holster before returning to clearing the path. “My father.” He says, what feels like ages later.

“Wait. Fenn’s your father?”

He exhales a bit of amusement. “No. The pistols. They were my father’s.”

Leia almost stops walking entirely then, the weight of the gift sinking in. Boba said before he has no family. So they’re a relic, a memento. And he doesn’t seem the type to keep a memento around of someone he doesn’t care about. He's given her something of his family's. He's given her more than she may ever be able to return to him. All her mementos, big and small, valuable and personal, were destroyed, or, if left on Coruscant, probably destroyed. Hopefully by Rebel Intelligence. She shudders to imagine an imperial searching through her apartment, riffling through old holos and little treasures.

* * *

 

He clears his throat. It’s such a human noise, underneath that helmet, that it sends shivers down her spine.  “Leia,” he starts to say.

Her hand slips into his. Not caring how thick and battle-damaged the gloved hand is. Not caring how much blood has stained that hand. Only caring that it’s his hand, and he’s… hers, in some small, temporary way. She gives his hand a little squeeze. “Thank you.”

He turns to look at their entwined hands. The noises of the forest around them dull. She’d pay all the credits she’d ever won in sabacc to see his face at that moment. “The whipcord was... excessive.”

“Yes,” Leia responds. “I’m my own person. Not your merchandise.”

“I’ve never taken a bounty on you.” He pulls his hand away and speaks stiffly. “I’d never… do what we did with one.” There’s disgust, faint but clear in his words, and more so with his posture. “I’m a bounty hunter, Leia, not a monster.”

She knows. And sometimes, that’s what makes all of this so much more difficult. 

 

After about an hour in the underbrush, they reach a small green structure. This is the home of the Mand’alor. The ruler that, for some unknown reason, Boba is convinced can help her. She can tell a lot about the idea of power here based on the structure. There’s no gilding, no fancy decorations. It’s utterly practical. It’s a just a house of some sort, with a domed roof. Camouflaged against all the trees around it. Protected, and if Leia’s guess is correct, well-armored. 

_ Everything gets shot here, _ Boba’s voice echos. Just how dangerous a place has she walked into?

“Stay here.” Boba says, pointing to the tree line they’d just left.

“But-”

“Don’t test me.”

She almost laughs, because that’s all they’ve done since the moment they’d met each other.

“Leia.”

She folds her arms. “I’m coming with you. You’ve brought me this far.”

There’s a curt exhale under his helmet, and she knows he’s rolled his eyes. He plunges ahead, out of the cover of the trees. Leia follows, and tries to shake the feeling they’re being watched. She’s traveling with Boba Fett. Boba, who mentioned to her his helmet gives him 360 degree vision. Boba, who could kill anyone without a second thought.

Anyone but Darth Vader, it seems.

She wonders if the two have fought. No. There’s no way Vader would have let him live if they had.

Her thoughts are halted when the door of the little cottage swings open. A Mandalorian exits. His green armor is as faded as Boba’s, but he’s taller, lankier. His gaze swivels in their direction. A warm voice calls out. “Why, it’s little Bo’ika, all grown up and-”

“Enough, Shysa.”

In the past forty-eight intimate hours, Leia had forgotten just how cold Boba could sound when things were all business. She’d told herself his chilled tone with her was his usual one. But like the handmade comb in her hair, his tone to her was something private, secret, and just a little clumsy. This tone, icy and devoid of any feeling, was his practiced voice. There was barely even a hint of that unfamiliar accent that she caught little whispers of in his vowels.

“Whoa, whoa. You two come up an’ crash on my planet, an’ you’re gonna boss me around? That how you think it’s gonna work?” His hand drops to the blaster at his belt. Despite Fenn Shysa’s bouncing tone, there’s real danger in his movements.

“I’m here to cut a deal.”

“Aren’t you always,” Fenn replies. 

Leia resists the urge to roll her eyes at the posturing exchange. Fenn might have scared her at first, but given this ego-exchange, she’s a little less worried. 

“Inside?” Boba nods at the house.

“What, you ain’t gonna even introduce me to the pretty little lady over there?”

“She can introduce herself.”

And she caught it. The tiniest shift of tone. The warmth there, the… no. She wouldn’t call it affection. That would just be silly, the idea that he feels affection for her. But what he does feel, she realizes, is respect. He knows she can handle herself in a fight, and is no one’s ‘little lady’. It makes Leia stand a little straighter,. “I’m Leia. Just Leia.”

“Nice to meet ya, Just-Leia.”

Fenn Shysa, she decides, is a flirt. But he’s not stupid. That helmet tilted down while she was speaking, and took in the lightsaber at her hip. So she says, “And may I call you just Fenn?”

“Why, yes. I think you just might do that.” He puts a hand on the side of his helmet, pressing the thumb lock. “C’mon little Boba. Helmet off. Let’s see how you’ve grown up. Handsome as your dad, I bet.”

There’s a bitter laugh in Fenn’s words that Leia’s not sure what to make of. Something about Boba’s father. There’s something important they both know, and she doesn’t.

_ I have no family,  _ he’d said.

Boba pauses, and then unlatches his own helmet. She knows what he looks like, of course,(she knows what he looks like without his helmet, without his armor, without his clothes… but she doesn’t know what he looks like when he’s truly happy, and that already weighs on her.)  so it’s Fenn she studies. He’s a little older than Boba. Maybe mid-forties. Handsome, in a rugged way, with a sandy crest of hair and little crinkled lines by his eyes. He nods at her.

Boba says, “Let’s get this talk over with.”

“With that attitude, ain’t no doubt it’ll be a joy,” Fenn replies, but swings open the door. “You sure your little miss ain’t gonna join us?”

This time, with his helmet off, Leia can see the possessive sweep of Boba’s eyes over her, but his words betray that heat. He simply shrugs. “That little miss can handle herself. Trust me.”

The two men go inside.

* * *

 

She’s not one to enjoy being left out of things, but the confrontation with Fenn is clearly one that makes Boba a little on edge. So, Leia sits on a fallen tree, and waits. She lets herself listen, like she always does, but the two are speaking in a foreign language, that same rolling cadence she’d heard in the phrase  _ Mand’alor _ .

She’s always been a good listener.

She’s never considered it might be the Force making her one.

She’s still mulling over that though when a new person in armor comes through the tree-line. Or at least, partial armor. Even to her untrained eye, it looks like a hodgepodge, and he doesn’t have a helmet on at all. He tilts his head when he sees her, and raises a hand shyly, in a small wave.

Leia stared at the young man, who watches her back in a way that’s an oddly familiar one.  Why is he so familiar? The hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

And something, deep down inside her, something she’s not quite ready to name as that all-powerful connection between her and other living things… springs to life.

She ignores it.

She squints at him, that nano-second expression that Captain Andor used to call her databank entry gaze, as if she was gauging her opponent, searching her records for what she might know, and making a snap second deduction.

Which was, oddly enough, almost always accurate. Only Cassian himself was better at catching people lying, and he always said that was because he was a liar himself.

But now her ability makes her shiver. The cacophony of voices whisper, deep inside her. She knows if she closes her eyes

“Hello,” Leia tries to greet the young man. His buzzed hair is a dark brown, and his eyes are as dark as the night sky. She knows she’s seen those eyes.

Recently.

Her mouth goes dry, and her heart starts to hammer.

But then, a second man in armor approaches, and now, Leia freezes.

"Kad'ika! You wandered off.”

"Sorry, buir..."

The young man talks in Mandalorian to the one who approached. She's too flustered to speak. Because Boba's face stares back at her.

"I..." She starts. 

That makes the man look closer at her. He’s almost exactly Boba. Same height. Same eyes. Same nose and hair color. 

But he’s not Boba. He’s a bit older, a little different in shape, from what she can tell under his armor. When he sees the lightsaber at her belt, his eyes narrow.  "Jetii," he snarls. It’s Boba's voice too, or almost. A little less raspy, a little smoother. More well rested. 

His eyes are locked on her lightsaber. Just wearing it is enough of a threat for him  This was what Boba had been afraid of. Whoever this Fett-relative was, he really didn’t like Jedi.

Because the Mandalorians had fought Jedi. That was right. All those history classes she’d dozed off or skipped with Winter come rushing back. 

Leia draws her pistols, with steady hands that betray nothing. She’d thought about going to the lightsaber, had heard tales of their ability to block blaster bolts, but she doesn’t think that’s the type of skill one learns-on-the-job.

So instead, she levels the gleaming silver pistols at the man with her lover’s face.

The man tilts his chin, just a hair’s breadth. “Where'd you get those, girl?"

The way he says that is a threat. She doesn't need to move to know the younger man's blaster is now trained on her. His earlier friendliness forgotten, all that wariness turned to militant duty. It's a posture she knows well, one she's trained for.

Can she hit two separate targets at once? She can’t kill them. Not if they’ve done nothing wrong, nothing beyond distrusting a stranger. And the pistols… she hadn’t even checked to see if they had a stun mode. 

Fierfek.

"Those ain't yours," he says, then repeats himself. "Where'd you'..." 

"She got them from me."

* * *

 

Leia spins at the sound of that voice, and curses herself a moment later for surrendering her back to the enemies.   But in the next second, she’s glad she did. 

Because she's looking up at Boba now. Boba, who's more furious that she’s ever seen him, (at least with his helmet off,) and staring past her at the two men. She’d been wrong to think the other man had his face. They are similar, yes, but Boba is cold durasteel, compared to the humanity found in the other’s.

Because even the disgust he’d showed for Jedi was more emotion than Boba usually allowed himself.

No shot is fired. Whatever the connection is between these men, it’s enough to de-escalate the conflict, just a little. Boba takes a step forward, and his gloved hand lands on her shoulder. It makes her shiver, that sudden, heavy contact with him.

"Bo'ika," the man says.

When he answers, Boba's tone is flat, bored. Despite the blaster he stares down, he sounds like an annoyed customer at a diner. "And which one are you?”

"What, don't recognize your brother?" the man comments in the same drawl. It's Boba's tone, but not quite. Leia remembers one time when she’d accidentally purchased counterfeit starblossom wine. The sweet notes were cloying, the bubbles too fizzy. This stranger’s drawl is like that. It’s a reflection of a real thing.

For the first time, though, Leia realizes Boba is imitating someone too, when he has that cold humor in his voice.  Their... father? That must be it. They’re twins, these two. Boba had lied when he had said he had no family.

Her brain has latched onto this as the only rational explanation, when four more men in varying amounts of armor reach them. Four men, carrying helmets under their arms. Four men with the same face.

Suddenly, the weight of history hits Leia hard enough that she staggers back, forgetting Boba's behind her. He lets out a sharp breath as she collides against his chest.

It's too raw a sound for him. He doesn’t exhale like that. Like he’s scared. No. He can’t be scared. He’s her bounty hunter. He's supposed to be the calm one, the rational one. The one she trusts, right now, more than anyone else. He’s supposed to be hers.

He’s not supposed to be a clone.

That word is from history books, from battles long forgotten. That word now belongs to the empire, to all their stormtroopers, to a thousand things that he wasn’t supposed to be part of.  He is supposed to somehow be separate from all of those things that occupied all of her life. The politics, the Empire, the war that had killed her biological parents.

No. Even that wasn’t true. 

Because one of her parents is still alive.

According to Boba.

Boba, who was a clone. Who must have been just a trooper in the Clone Wars. Infantry, probably. She’d heard they’d been the most  _ mass-produced. _ Even the thought makes her shudder. The knowledge that the man she was dangerously close to loving had been grown in a factory. 

 

_ She’d read first person accounts from the war. Ones that she wasn’t supposed to have gotten her hands on. Ones that had been supposedly destroyed. But she’d mentioned her interest to Cassian, and when he’d come across some on one of his missions (missions she wasn’t supposed to know about, because of course the Alliance would never conduct assassination missions) he’d brought them back for her. _

_ The documents told her how the civilians saw the clones. How they were treated the same as droids, devoid of rights. How the power to deploy so much manpower, so easily, had led the Senate to any number of bad choices. _

_ Choices that had cost men like the ones around her their lives. _

_ “At least,” Cassian had told her quietly, when she’d expressed her horror, “With our fight, we do it ourselves.” She’d heard from others that Cassian’s parents had been Separatists, and even then, years later, there had been a look of pure disgust on his face at the idea of clones. At the idea of mass-producing living, breathing cannon fodder. _

_ But the cannons hadn’t killed them all, clearly.  _

 

The door of the small house opened. Around Leia, every single man tensed, in almost the same way. All of them, but Boba. He remained calm, his hand still on her shoulder. The other holding out his blaster.

And Leia clung to the pistol like a lifeline.

The sandy-haired man exits the house, helmet still off. He takes in the scene without any surprise.  Boba doesn’t look at him but asks, “We done here, Fenn?”

Fenn ods, a knowing smile spreading over his lips. "Oh, we’re done here."

Something about Fenn’s voice is a call to action for the men around them.  With the simple clatter of metal on armored hands, every one of the strangers draws a weapon, every single one of them trained on Leia and Boba.

Then,Fenn repeats himself, adding only one word to the end, and fixing his gaze clearly on Boba. With that word, all the guns lower. "We're done here, _Mand'alor._ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left in this arc! Thank you so much for reading, and for commenting, if you do! and the hugest thank you to Baar-ur from our RebelBounty Discord for BETA READING. Your talents are beyond compare!

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy! Comments are always incredibly appreciated for this rare-pair-of-my-heart :)


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